MORE ABOUT HEAT TRANSFER

By An Tran, Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Texas at Austin

Heat is the outcome of the excited state of molecules. When a substance is hot,
the molecules in the substance vibrate. The intensity of this vibration defines
how hot something is. When we say something is “cold”, it is actually a relative
statement saying that the particles do not vibrate as much as something that is
“hot”.

“Absolute zero” occurs at 0 Kelvin, or –273.15° Celsius. This is when the

particles in a substance do not vibrate at all. Interestingly enough, this state has
never been observed, and is only theorized. There are many different interesting
theories about what occurs at this temperature, such as the destruction of
matter, and other weird sci-fi sounding stuff, yet it is difficult to achieve.

But to keep with the subject, heat like all other states, tries to reach equilibrium.
That is to say, if one thing is hotter than another, they will try to reach the same
temperature. It is analogous to two tanks of water connected by a pipe. If one
tank is higher, the water will flow through the pipe to the lower tank. After a
while, the two tanks will reach equilibrium.

The equilibrium temperature that the two substances will reach depends on
many variables. These variables include the masses of the two substances and
their latent heat. The speed at which the two substances will reach equilibrium
temperature depends on the temperature difference between the two substances
and how fast the heat is transferred from the hotter substance to the cooler
substance.

This is where insulation enters the picture. Although it is inevitable that the two
substances reach an equilibrium temperature, insulation will prolong the time it
takes to reach it.

Heat Flow Methods

Heat flows by using three methods of heat transfer: conduction, convection,
and radiation.

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Conduction
Conduction occurs in solids. It can occur within a solid, or between two adjacent
solids. On a microscopic level, conduction transfers heat by spreading the
vibrations of molecules.

For example, in a bar of aluminum, if you heat on end, the aluminum atoms
vibrate in that end. For a moment, you will have a state of in-equilibrium, where
one end of the aluminum is hot but the other remains cool. Conduction occurs
when the vibrations of one end progress to another. The atoms actually hit each
other, and excited nearby atoms. A chain reaction occurs, until all the atoms in
the aluminum bar are excited at the same level.

Note the conduction occurs only within the solids. In a solid, the particles
do not move with respect to each other, other than their vibrations. In contrast,
in a liquid, the particles can move with respect to each other, as well as vibrate.

Convection
Convection is the transfer of heat through a fluid. It works on the same principle
as conduction, but because of the nature of a fluid, the excited particles can also
travel around. This type of heat transfer is used in those old heaters with the
hot water flowing through them. They heat up (excite) the air around them.
This air is then free to travel.

Heated air vibrates more, thus takes up more room, and is thus less dense than
cold air. Because of gravity, the colder air will be pulled harder to the ground.
This is why hot air rises.

There are two types of convection, free convection, and forced convection. Free
convection still air contacts with a surface of different temperatures and
therefore starts the heat transfer process. Forced convection occurs when the
air is moving with respect to the surface. For example, a fan blowing on the hot
plate is an example of forced convection.

Free Convection
A classic example of free convection is a flat horizontal plate that is heated to a
temperature higher than the air. The magnitude of the heat transfer will depend
on many things, from the type of surface to the heat transfer coefficient of the
air. But I would like to focus on the most relevant, and that is the orientation of
the heat plate.

In this case, it is horizontal, but is it an upper surface plate or a lower surface

plate. In other words, is it the ceiling or the floor being heated? This will
drastically affect how the air will try to reach equilibrium. It may be stable or
unstable.

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In unstable equilibrium, the floor is being heated. The floor heats the air near
the floor. This air expands, and then rises because it is less dense than the
unheated air. The cooler air will “fall” to the heated floor. This forms
“convection cells”, where small pockets of air rotate, with hot air rising and cold
air falling.

Suppose the floor and the ceiling is held at a constant temperature, with the
floor being heated. Keep in the mind that in this case, true equilibrium will not be
reached because the floor and the ceiling are kept at constant temperatures.

But the air will reach equilibrium. Not in the sense that every air particle will be
at the same temperature, but that heat transfer in the air will reach “steady-
state”. In other words, the heat transferred to the air from the heated floor
equals the heat transferred to the cooled ceiling from the air.

In stable equilibrium, the ceiling is heated. The air near the ceiling gets heated;
it expands, and wants to rise. So it stays near the ceiling where it gets heated
more and more until it reaches equilibrium with the ceiling.

There is also heat transfer going throughout the air molecules in a downward
direction. Though it is not aided by airflow as unstable as the equilibrium was.

Vertical
All the above concepts apply to a vertical plate. The plate will heat the air near
it. This air will expand, and then rise. But in a vertical plate, the air will rise
along the plate, where it can be further heated.

Forced Convection
Forced convection occurs when the air is moving respective to the heated
surface, not by means of natural convection, but by a fan or some other device.

Radiation
Radiation is the transfer of heat by electromagnetic radiation. Radiation does
not need a medium to transfer heat, such as air. This is why the heat from the
sun can travel across space to the earth.

All things with any amount of heat will radiate. Even an ice cube in an oven will
radiate heat away. But what is relative to heat transfer is the net radiation. The
ice cube in the oven will receive a lot more heat through convection and
radiation that it will loose heat from radiation.

The amount of heat an object radiates away is related to its absolute

temperature. Absolute temperature sets 0° at absolute zero. In the SI system,
this temperature is measured in Kelvin’s (K). 0 K is absolute zero. Water freezes
at 273.15K and boils at 373.15 K.

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The ideal radiator is a blackbody. Blackbody describes an object that will radiate
the most amount for its temperature.
The black body equation is:
Heat flux = (Stephan Botzman Constant (SB constant)) * Temperature4
As you can see, the heat flux from radiation varies with temperature to the
fourth power!

But in actuality, things don’t emit radiation like a perfect blackbody, but just a
fraction of it. This fraction is called the “Emittance” of a surface. So the actual
heat flux from the surface is:
Heat flux = emittance * SBConstant * Temp4
So now we know how much heat leaves a surface from radiation, but how much
is absorbed by radiation? “Irradiation” is the radiation that heats a surface
(verses generic “radiation”, I define this for clarity in the following sections).

Our houses will stay cooler if the roof is white rather than black. I know this is
obvious, but I want to clearly define “absorptance”. Absorptance of a surface is
the fraction of irradiation that is converted into heat within the surface. An
object with a surface with a higher absorptance will heat up more in that of a
lower absorptance for the same irradiation. As in emittance, a blackbody is a
perfect absorber.

So in summary: Emittance relates how much an object will radiate heat away
compared to a blackbody. Absorptance relates how much an object will heat up
compared to a blackbody.

The net heat flux from one surface to another will depend on several factors,
namely the emittance of the surfaces, the absorptance of the surfaces, and the
view factors between the surfaces.

The view factors the ratio of irradiation on a surface to the radiation emitted by
the other surface. I will try to clearly define this in the diagram below. Assume
we are only considering the radiation emitted from surface 1 and the irradiation
onto surface 2, not vice versa. Also assume there is no other source of radiation.

As you can see, not all of the radiation from surface 1 reaches surface 2. This is
because some of the radiation goes out of the gap between the two and never
hits surface 2. Thus the view factor is less than 1. If surface 2 were infinitely
close to surface 1 (hence no gap), the view factor would be one. As surface 2
goes further and further away from surface 1, the view factor approaches 0.
There are several equations from different geometries to calculate the view
factor, from flat surfaces to curved objects. We used a fairly complex equation in
our report for a cylinder within another cylinder.

So assume we have a radiator, an absorber, and we know the view factor

between these two objects. How can we calculate the heat from the radiator to

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the absorber? But by intuition, as any of the three factors increase, the heat
transferred to the absorbing surface increases. If the emittance of the radiator
increases, it radiates more heat away. If the absorptance of the absorber
increases, it converts more of the irradiated energy into heat. If the view factor
increases, more of the radiation from the radiator reaches the absorber.

Thermal Insulation
Well, obviously the main equation is: How does all this relate back to thermal
insulation?”

As described earlier, all things will reach equilibrium. “All things within a closed
system will reach equilibrium,” so lets examine this in more detail.

Closed systems
A closed system is an area where there is no flux. This definition is probably just
as confusing, so let define by example.

For example a hotel room is NOT a closed system. Although an area has not
been defined nor has it’s boundaries (the boundaries of the hotel room are the
walls, the window, and the door), there are many fluxes into the system.

Fluxes are grouped into two main categories: mass and energy (Einstein equated
these two, but for our purposes, we will treat mass and energy as separate).

There is mass flux into the hotel room from the air coming into the vents, the air
leaving out the crevice under the door, the water from the pipes in the
bathroom, etc. There is energy transfer through the electrical outlets powering
the TV, the lights, the heat in the hot water in the bathroom, and heat
conducting through the walls.

So technically, there is really no “closed system”. But we can apply this term to
several conditions and estimate the outcome.

Equilibrium
Let’s take an example of a hot water pipe in the hotel room. In this system, the
pipe and the hotel room are always trying to reach equilibrium from a heat
transfer standpoint. The air will heat up a little, and the pipe will cool down a
little. But considering the large mass of air compared to the small mass of water,
the equilibrium of temperature will be very, very close to the air temperature.

So why insulate? In the beginning, both pipes have the same initial
temperature, and ultimately, in the end, but pipe will have the same final
temperature. The difference insulation makes is the rate at which the heat is
transferred. The pipe with less insulation will approach the air temperature a lot
quicker than the pipe with more insulation. This is because insulation prevents
heat transfer.

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Keep in mind that this is just for a closed system. If the water in the pipe was
flowing, there would be mass and heat transfer through the system. In this
case, to keep the water from freezing, the pipe must be insulated to make the
heat transferred away from the pipe from conduction, convection, and radiation
less than the net heat transferred into the pipe. The net heat transferred into
the pipe is the heat from the water flowing into the pipe minus the heat from the
water flowing out of the pipe.

Let’s assume terrible insulating conditions. In this case, all the heat transferred
into the water pipe from water flow is lost to the environment through the
insulation. Thus the water flow out of the pipe is the environmental
temperature, which in this case is freezing.

Under optimum conditions, all the heat transferred into the pipe from water flow
leaves the pipe in the water out of the pipe. No heat is lost to the environment,
thus the water retains all of its heat.

In real conditions, there will always be heat loss through the insulation. In order
to determine the amount of insulation required to reduce this heat rate to keep
the water from freezing will depend on many factors. The longer the pipe is, the
more surface area the pipe can loose heat. The slower the water flow rate, the
less heat transferred into the pipe system. The less the insulation, the more heat
will be lost into the environment. All these pipe-depend factors, which you can
directly vary. But there are also other factors you may also need to consider.
The higher the wind speed around the pipe, the higher the convectional heat
transfers from the pipe. The colder the surroundings of the pipe, the higher the
radiational heat transfers from the pipe.

All these factors make the pipe problem very hard to simulate. If you take worst
case conditions, which are no water flow in a long pipe in freezing conditions, I
don’t think any insulator will prevent the water from freezing for two days. But if
you know the flow rate, and the water temperature, then you could simulate the
problem.

Authored by: An Tran, Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Texas at Austin

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