An Unstructured Finite-Volume Method for Transient Heat Conduction Analysis of Multilayer Functionally Graded Materials with Mixed Grids

Abstract

An unstructured finite-volume time-domain method (UFVTDM) is developed to solve two-dimensional transient heat conduction in multilayer functionally graded materials (FGMs). A four-node quadrilateral grid and a three-node triangular grid are employed to deal with mixed-grid problems. The accuracy of the method is improved by treating the quadrilateral grid as a bilinear element with consideration of both the linear term and the constant term. The improvement is validated to be vital to avoid violent numerical oscillation when applying the method to heat point-source problems. The accuracy and capability of the UFVTDM are validated by numerical tests.

Acknowledgments

The financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant 51206031 is gratefully acknowledged.