Radial conduction effects in transient heat transfer experiments

Convective heat transfer data is frequently obtained from transient surface temperature measurements. Thin film resistance gauges, thermocouples, and thermochromic liquid crystals, are used in various situations to measure the surface temperature history. By assuming that uniform semi-infinite flat plate conditions apply, it is possible to express the instantaneous surface heat flux as an analytical function of the transient surface temperature(1). Various approaches can be used to account for the presence of multi-layered substrates and finite thickness substrate effects (Schultz and Jones(1); Doorly and Oldfield(2); Guo et al (3)), however, the effects of surface curvature are usually neglected.