TABLE OF CONTENTS The three chapters in this part, two by U.S. academics and one by an engineer employed in industry in Japan, present calculations that vary from being conjectural to representing an industrial situation. The first chapter, which covers parameter estimation, is arguably the most theoretical in the entire handbook. The second chapter deals with the thermal design of boxes whose dimensions do not exceed 1 m and whose function is to house heat-generating components that must be prevented from overheating. Examples include desktop computers, laptop computers, and cell phones. Relevant calculations involve the upper bounds of heat transfer from sealed boxes, from boxes having vent ports for a natural draft, and from boxes cooled by fans. The third chapter in this part presents calculations that can be used to predict the freezing time of strawberries being frozen in a fluidized-bed freezer.
Ashley F. Emery
Mechanical Engineering Department
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington
Consider the one-dimensional heat transfer through a plane layer whose temperature satisfies
| (34.1) |  |
with boundary conditions
| (34.2a) |  |
| (34.2b) |  |
and initial conditions
| (34.2c) |  |
We wish to estimate the thermal diffusivity ? = k/ ? c. We will do this by measuring the temperature at a selected location x = x* as a function of time. The idea is to choose a value of the conductivity for...
