MATLAB: PDE Thermal Model with heat produced as a function

pdethermal

I am doing a thermal Problem similar to the Mathworks rod example. But rather than having constant heat production throughout the geometry I have heat production varying with Location, time, temperature and another variable (current). How specify my heat source as a function of Location (x and y) ? Thank you in advance Ben

Best Answer

To write the surce as a function of time and temperature, follow this example. In short, give the heat source as a function that takes two arguments, region and state. Toolbox function pass these arguments, whose values you can see described, for example, here. Your heat source function should return a row vector of values of the same number of elements as in, for example, the region.x field.

Alan Weiss

MATLAB mathematical toolbox documentation

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Thermal conductivity, pde toolbox

Hi Juan,

I recommend using the new ThermalModel workflow.

In the ThermalModel based workflow you can use the function thermalProperties to define thermal conductivity, mass density, and specific heat, all of which can also be function spatial coordinates (x,y) and the temperature itself (nonlinear).

For example if your thermal conductivity is linear function of x & y, then you can define the thermal conductivity as a function:

function k = kFunc(region,state)
k  = 1 + 0.1*region.x + 0.01*region.y;
end

You can then specify kFunc in thermalProperties function as in the example below:

model = createpde('thermal','transient');
importGeometry(model,'Block.stl');
thermalProperties(model,'ThermalConductivity',@kFunc,'MassDensity',1,'SpecificHeat',1)
generateMesh(model);
thermalBC(model,'Face',1,'Temperature',1)
thermalIC(model,0);
R = solve(model,[0,0.01])
pdeplot3D(model,'ColorMapData',R.Temperature(:,2))

Regards, Ravi

MATLAB: Heat Distribution in a Circular Cylindrical Rod cfunction doesnt include density

In this section of the example you can see that rho is included in the 'MassDensity' argument, which automatically applies it to the correct part of the equation. If you were using the generic solver instead of the thermal solver, then indeed you would include rho in the d argument.