International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 45 (2002) 579584

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Calculating transient wall heat ux from measurements

of surface temperature
L. Reichelt *, U. Meingast, U. Renz
Lehrstuhl f
ur W
arme
ubertragung und Klimatechnik, RheinischWestfalische Technische Hochschule Aachen, 52056 Aachen, Germany
Received 20 February 2001; received in revised form 25 April 2001

Abstract
Wall heat uxes can be derived from time resolved measurements of the surface temperature. This paper describes an
analytical approach to calculate the heat ux from an analytical solution of the one-dimensional transient energy
equation with transient boundary conditions using the Laplace transformation. The results are compared to simple test
cases for which the heat uxes are given in literature. The method is used to calculate the heat ux from a fuel spray to a
wall at diesel engine conditions. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Surface temperature; Wall heat ux; Laplace transformation; Analytical solution; Inverse problem

1. Introduction and the heat ux is obtained from the temperature

gradient at the surface. Thus it is not necessary to nu-
In modern direct injection engines the fuel spray in- merically solve the energy equation on the whole domain
teracts with the piston and the cylinder walls. These and computational eorts and errors due to numerical
interactions may aect the atomization of the spray. In inaccuracy are reduced.
an experimental set-up a high temperature high pressure
injection chamber is used to examine spray wall inter-
actions. Since the heat ux to the wall cannot be
measured directly, indirect measurement techniques 2. Governing equations
have to be employed. Fast surface thermocouples are
used to measure the surface temperature at three posi- Since the problem is considered to be one-dimen-
tions within the impingement region of the spray. Fig. 1 sional the transient energy equation is
shows a sketch of the experimental setup and the ther-
oh o2 h
mocouples. The thermocouple is soldered at its top to ;
the wall and surrounded by an air gap. Because of this os on2
1
insulation the heat conduction in the thermocouple can ta x
s 2; n ; h# #d :
be assumed to be one-dimensional. Details of the ex- d d
perimental setup can be found in [1]. To calculate the
heat ux from these measurements an analytical ap- Assuming an uniform temperature distribution prior
proach is proposed. The Laplace transformation is used the impingement of the spray and a constant temper-
ature #d at x d the initial and boundary conditions
are:

*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +49-241-80-5537; fax: +49-241- hn; 0 0;
8888-143.
h0; t #S t #d hS t; 2
E-mail address: reichelt@wuek.rwth-aachen.de (L. Rei-
chelt). h1; t 0:

0017-9310/02/$ - see front matter 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 0 1 7 - 9 3 1 0 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 1 5 7 - 0
580 L. Reichelt et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 45 (2002) 579584

Nomenclature Ds dimensionless time-step

D# temperature dierence
a thermal diusivity # temperature
c heat capacity h temperature dierence: h # #d
F frequency h transformed temperature
L Laplace transformation operator k thermal conductivity
p substitution: p2 s . density
q_ 00 wall heat ux s dimensionless time
s parameter in frequency-domain n dimensionless coordinate
t time
Indices
x coordinate
M averaged
Greek letters S surface
d thickness of the wall d position x d

Fig. 1. Sketch of the experimental setup and a surface thermocouple.

If the transient temperature distribution at the surface Using the transformed boundary conditions the solution
is known, the instantaneous heat ux can be calcu- becomes
lated: pn
e epn 2

o# k oh hn; s hS s
: 6
q_ 00 k 0; t
0; s: 3 1 e 2p
ox d on
In order to calculate the heat ux the gradient at the
A positive sign to the heat ux denotes heat ux into the surface is needed according to Eq. (3):
wall. Using the Laplace transformation [2] this partial
oh 1 e 2p
dierential equation can be transformed into an ordi- 0; s hS sp

on 1 e 2p
nary dierential equation:
1 e 2p
o2 h shS s
: 7
shn; s hn; 0 shn; s : 4 p1 e 2p
on2
Expanding the denominator according to
Using p2 s the general solution for this equation is X
1
1
1 xn ; x<1 8
hn; s Aep
n Be p
n
: 5 1 x n1
 L. Reichelt et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 45 (2002) 579584 581

the surface gradient may be expressed as a series: Then the integral in Eq. (13) can be split into
Z s1
! k d#S 
oh 1 e 2p X 1 q_ 00 si p s
0; s shS s
1 e 2np p
d 0 ds
on p !
n1
1 X1
n2 =si s
  p 1 2 e ds
1 e 2p si s n1
shS s
Z s2
p p k d#S 
p s

X 1  ! p
d s1 ds
e 2np e 2n2p !
1 X1
n1
p p  p 1 2 e n2 =si s
ds
! si s n1
1 X 1
e 2np Z si
shS s
2 : 9 k d#S  1
|{z} p p


p s p
n1 p
d si 1 ds  si s
F 1 s |{z} !
F 2 s X 1
2 
 12 e n =si s ds : 14
n1
Using transformation tables given for example in [2,3],
both terms of this expression may be transformed For small values s  1 the sum may be neglected, hence
back: i 1 Z sk1
k X d#S  1
q_ 00 si p s
p ds : 15
dhS pd k0 sk ds si s
F1 t t;
dt
! 10 To get a good approximation of the derivative in the
1 X1
interval sk ; sk1 the Taylor series expansion is used:
n2 =t
F2 t p 1 2 e :
pt n1 d#S  d#S  d2 #S
s sM s sM sM
ds ds ds2 16
Using the convolution-theorem [2] sk sk1 2k 1
sM Ds :
Z t 2 2
L 1 F 1 s
F 2 s F1 t
F2 t t dt 11
0 Using
d#S #S;k1 #S;k
the equation for the surface gradient can be derived: #0S;k sM
ds Ds
Z s d2 #S
oh dhS  1 #00S;k 2 sM
0; s s
p ds
on 0 ds ps s
#S;k2 #S;k1 #S;k #S;k 1
! : 17
X1
n2 =s s
2Ds2
 12 e ds : 12
n1 Eq. (15) may be written as
q_ 00 si
Applying Eq. (3) the wall heat ux can be deter-
i 1 Z sk1  
mined: k X 1
p #0S;k s sM #00S;k
p ds :
Z s
pd k0 sk si s
k d#S  1
q_ 00 s p s
p 18
p
d ds
0 s s
! Integrating this equation yields the nal equation to
X
1
n2 =s s
 12 e ds : 13 calculate the heat ux from the measured data:
n1
r i 1   
k Ds X 2k 1
q_ 00 si 2 #0S;k #00S;k Ds i
d p k0 2
3. Implementation 
Ds
 Ri;k #00S;k Si;k ;
3
The derived expression for the heat ux (Eq. (13)) is
evaluated numerically using the measured surface tem- Ri;k i k1=2 i k 11=2 ; 19
peratures #S . These values are sampled at discrete time
intervals si i
Ds. Si;k i k3=2 i k 13=2 :
582 L. Reichelt et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 45 (2002) 579584
Fig. 2. Surface heat uxes of a seminnite wall derived with dierent solutions (a 3:9  10
f 20 kHz).
4. Comparison with analytical results
For a semi-innite body whose surface temperature is
changing according to
#S t #S;0 D# sin2ptf ; 20
where f denotes the frequency of the temperature
changes and #S;0 and D# the average surface temperature
and the amplitude of the temperature changes, the sur-
face heat ux may be exactly calculated as [4]
r Fig. 1) and the lowpass ltered data. Obviously the
00 pf
q_ t kD# sin 2ptf cos 2ptf : 21
a derivative of the temperature is needed, it is sucient
Fig. 2 shows a comparison between heat uxes calcu-
lated from the solution derived above and the exact
solution from Eq. (21). The parameters are f 20 kHz,
a 3:9  10 6 m2 s 1 and k 15 W m 1 K 1 . For the
numerical calculations the data has been sampled at
intervals of Dt 2  10 6 s. It can be seen that after a
short settling time the dierences between the dierent
solutions are very small and that using the Taylor ex-
pansion the errors may be signicantly reduced at high
frequencies. The same calculation with a frequency of
f 500 Hz shows no dierence whether the Taylor ex-
pansion is used or not.
5. Results
The method presented here has been used to deter-
mine the surface heat ux during spray/wall interaction
under diesel engine conditions. The data were sampled
at a data rate of 5 MHz using a digital oscilloscope and
processed in a PC using the DAQ Software LabView
5.0 [5]. To suppress the noise from the AnalogDigital
Converter, a digital lowpass lter is used. A second-
1
6
m2 s 1 , k 15 W m K 1,
order digital Butterworth lter [5,6] with a cut-o fre-
quency of 20 kHz provided good results. Fig. 3 shows
the amplitude response of the lter. A n-dodecane
spray is impinging orthogonally on a wall. The ambient
gas pressure and the fuel injection pressure are set to
pGas 38:5 bar and pinj 800 bar, respectively. The
temperatures of the gas and the wall are set to
#Gas #W 600 K, the distance between the nozzle
and the wall is zW 30 mm. Fig. 4 shows the original
temperature data at three dierent radial positions (see
noise is eectively suppressed. Since only the temporal
to measure the change of the surface temperature rel-
ative to the temperature before the start of the injec-
tion. Thus all the traces start at a relative temperature
of 0 K.
Fig. 5 shows the heat uxes calculated from the data
shown in Fig. 4. The parameters used are: Dt 2 
10 7 s, a 6:5  10 6 m2 s 1 , k 28:1 W m 1 K 1 and
d 10 mm. To get averaged heat ux values which can
be used to validate numerical simulations of the spray
wall interactions [1] the heat uxes have also been
Fig. 3. Amplitude response of the butterworth lter.
 L. Reichelt et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 45 (2002) 579584 583

Fig. 4. Unltered (left) and ltered (right) temperature data.

Fig. 5. Wall heat uxes: left: single measurement, right: heat uxes from averaged temperature data (pGas 38:5 bar, pinj 800 bar,
#Gas #Wall 600 K, zW 30 mm).

calculated from averaged temperature measurements during wall contact is enhanced and the results support
derived from 50 injections. The two peaks at times 0.3 the interpretation of data gained with optical ow
and 1.6 ms result from electromagnetic noise from the measurements.
injector at the beginning and the end of the injection and
can not be further suppressed by ltering without
altering the data. Acknowledgements

Part of this work has been granted by the German

6. Conclusions
An analytical approach to calculate heat uxes from
time resolved measurements of the surface temperature
has been introduced. The method proposed here shows
good agreement with analytical results and needs only
little computational eorts. By the use of this method
wall heat uxes of fuel sprays at diesel engine conditions
have been calculated. The understanding of the process
Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and Ford
Forschungszentrum Aachen GmbH under grant no.
13N7182/1.
References
[1] U. Meingast, M. Staudt, L. Reichelt, U. Renz, F.-A.
Sommerho, Analysis of spray/wall interaction under diesel
584 L. Reichelt et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 45 (2002) 579584

engine conditions, SAE Technical Paper 2000-01-0272
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[2] I.N. Bronstein, K.A. Semendjajew, G. Musiol, H. M uhlig,
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[3] H.S. Carslaw, J.C. Jaeger, Conduction of Heat in Solids,
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[4] E. Eckert, R.M. Drake, Analysis of Heat and Mass
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[5] LabView 5.0 Users Guide, National Instruments, Austin,
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[6] C.B. Rorabaugh, Digital Filter Designer's Handbook,
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