UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA DEL CARIBE

FACULTAD DE INGENIERIAS
PROGRAMA DE INGENIERIA MECANICA
TRANSFERENCIA DE CALOR
TALLER 1. CONCEPTOS BSICOS
Test your understanding of the important terms and concepts introduced in this chapter
by addressing the following questions:
1. What are the physical mechanisms associated with heat transfer by conduction,
convection, and radiation?
2. What is the driving potential for heat transfer? What are analogs to this
potential and to heat transfer itself for the transport of electric charge?
3. What is the difference between a heat flux and a heat rate? What are their
units?
4. What is a temperature gradient? What are its units? What is the relationship of
heat flow to a temperature gradient?
5. What is the thermal conductivity? What are its units? What role does it play in
heat transfer?
6. What is Fourier.s law ? Can you write the equation from memory?
7. If heat transfer by conduction through a medium occurs under steady-state
conditions, will the temperature at a particular instant vary with location in the
medium? Will the temperature at a particular location vary with time?
8. What is the difference between natural convection and forced convection?
9. What conditions are necessary for the development of a hydrodynamic
boundary layer? A thermal boundary layer? What varies across a hydrodynamic
boundary layer? Across a thermal boundary layer?
10. If convection heat transfer for flow of a liquid or a vapor is not characterized by
liquid/vapor phase change, what is the nature of the energy being transferred?
What is it if there is such a phase change?
11. What is Newton.s law of cooling ? Can you write the equation from memory?
12. What role is played by the convection heat transfer coefficient in Newtons law
of cooling? What are its units?
13. What effect does convection heat transfer from or to a surface have on the solid
bounded by the surface?
14. What is predicted by the StefanBoltzmann law, and what unit of temperature
must be used with the law? Can you write the equation from memory?
15. What is the emissivity, and what role does it play in characterizing radiation
transfer at a surface?
16. What is irradiation? What are its units?
17. What two outcomes characterize the response of an opaque surface to incident
radiation?
18. Which outcome affects the thermal energy of the medium bounded by the
Surface and how? What property characterizes this outcome?
19. What conditions are associated with use of the radiation heat transfer
coefficient ?
20. Can you write the equation used to express net radiation exchange between a
small isothermal surface and a large isothermal enclosure?
21. Consider the surface of a solid that is at an elevated temperature and exposed
to cooler surroundings. By what mode(s) is heat transferred from the surface if
(1) it is in intimate (perfect) contact with another solid, (2) it is exposed to the
flow of a liquid, (3) it is exposed to the flow of a gas, and (4) it is in an
evacuated chamber?
22. What is the inherent difference between the application of conservation of
energy over a time interval and at an instant of time?

23. What is thermal energy storage? How does it differ from thermal energy
generation?
24. What role do the terms play in a surface energy balance?