Transient heat conduction analysis of solids with small open-ended tubular cavities by boundary face method

This paper applies the boundary face method (BFM) to solve transient heat conduction problems for the first time. Rather than using a transformation scheme, a direct solution of the boundary integral equation (BIE) with time domain fundamental solution is performed in this application. To avoid the domain integrals, the boundary integral equation is solved by the time stepping convolution method. For problems on structures that contain a large number of open-ended tubular shaped cavities in small diameters, a curvilinear tube element is employed to approximate the variables on the cavity surface. Furthermore, to perform integration and boundary variable approximation on the end faces that are intersected by the tubular cavity, a triangular element with negative part is adopted. With the two types of specified elements, the BFM is implemented to solve transient heat conduction problems on structures with open-ended tubular shaped cavities of small size which are usually inconvenience in finite element implementations. Three numerical examples on different structures are presented to illustrate the validity and efficiency of the method.