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Too often many heat management problems are not solved with thermal analysis because of excessive complexity, time, and cost. A method for quickly solving a sophisticated thermal/fluid system with minimal user interaction and with common desktop computer resources is presented. A desktop (Microsoft Windows™) thermal analysis package, WinTherm, consists of the Generic Processor (pre-processing software), the 3-D Thermal Model (a finite difference nodal network solver), and an Image Viewer (wireframe and animated thermal display). The theoretical basis for this thermal analysis toolkit will be discussed as well as examples of its implementation.

A fast, semi-automated method for visualizing the time-varying effects of radiative heat transfer, including obscuration and multiple reflections, is presented. Starting with a finite element surface description, an analyst assigns “groups” to a model by indicating which elements have the same material and surface properties. The elements within each group are combined into isothermal nodes. View factors are then calculated using a variant of the hemi-cube method. Transient nodal temperatures are calculated using an implicit solution to the finite difference equations derived from the thermal properties of each node and the radiation exchange between nodes.