Axisymmetric transient solutions of the heat diffusion problem in layered composite media

An analytical/numerical method for solving the problem of non-stationary he at diffusion in multilayered slabs is presented. This is an extension of pr evious methods that have been used to solve transient heat diffusion proble ms in one-dimension. In this work, two-dimensional semi-infinite media are considered and double integral transforms are used to obtain the correspond ing transfer matrix form from the governing partial differential equations. Numerical techniques are used to compute the overall transfer matrices of the system and to numerically invert them in order to obtain transient resu lts. Difficulties encountered with the numerical operations and ways to cir cumvent these are presented. The developed methodology has been applied to two-layered configurations. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.