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It's more of a Transport problem than a Thermo problem. Bored Send a noteboard - 29/09/2011 07:45:11 PM
An electric heater (P=200 W) is inside a box (length of each side=20 cm, thickness of each side=1 cm). Thermal equilibrium is reached. Afterwards the temperatures of the outer walls and the inner walls are, respectively, 20 C and 60 C.
What is the heat flux from the box? What is the thermal conductivity of the box's material?

I'm sure this is a piece of cake for some of you. I've no idea what to do. So..what do I do? I assume this is about Fourier's law.


It's been awhile, but here are the basics to get you going.

Heat flux should be measured in Energy/Area and fairly easy to solve. Convert your Heater power output to an appropriate unit and divide by the surface area of your box. This of course assumes that the bax radiates energy evenly. And I would use the simplified outside area of the box, rather than including a complicating factor for the difference between the inside area and outside area.

The conductivity is a more interesting question. I don't remember the specific equations anymore. I could look them up for you, but it's your homework, not mine. It should be a function of temperature gradient, material thickness and your pre-determined heat flux. Wait. It should be in the form of Q=U*A*dT(log mean). Q being heat transfer, U is thermal conductivity of the system, A is area, dT(log mean) is the log mean temperature difference, though that should be the same as just dT in this case. That would give you the box thermal conductivity, but not the material conductivity. That will include a material thickness factor. You should of course verify all of this with an appropriate textbook.
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Physics homework - 29/09/2011 06:34:01 PM 409 Views
It's more of a Transport problem than a Thermo problem. - 29/09/2011 07:45:11 PM 353 Views
Well... - 29/09/2011 08:18:10 PM 375 Views
Yessss. The answer's correct. Thank you thank you thank you *NM* - 29/09/2011 09:25:52 PM 134 Views
no he has no idea what he is talking about and just made all of that up - 29/09/2011 09:44:21 PM 338 Views

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