Mathematical Problems in Engineering

Volume 2013 (2013), Article ID 358473, 3 pages

http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/358473

Research Article

One-Phase Problems for Discontinuous Heat Transfer in Fractal Media

Ming-Sheng Hu,¹ Dumitru Baleanu,2,3,4 and Xiao-Jun Yang1,5

¹Institute of Software Science, Zhengzhou Normal University, Zhengzhou 450044, China

²Department of Mathematics and Computer Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Cankaya University, 06530 Ankara, Turkey

³Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, P.O. Box 80204, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia

⁴Institute of Space Sciences, Magurele, RO-077125 Bucharest, Romania

⁵Department of Mathematics and Mechanics, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, Jiangsu 221008, China

Received 7 November 2012; Accepted 20 December 2012

Academic Editor: József Kázmér Tar

Copyright © 2013 Ming-Sheng Hu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract.

We first propose the fractal models for the one-phase problems of discontinuous transient heat transfer. The models are taken in sense of local fractional differential operator and used to describe the (dimensionless) melting of fractal solid semi-infinite materials initially at their melt temperatures.

1. Introduction

We know that the local fractional calculus is set up on fractals. Fractal media is complex, and it appears in different fields of engineering and physics. Fractal physical parameters are considered as local fractional continuous functions, which is fractal characteristics of local fractional functional analysis from fractal geometry point of view. Moreover, the local fractional calculus is a powerful tool to model Fourier law of heat conductions in discontinuous heat transfer in fractal media. Local fractional heat-conduction equations may be applied to describe the fractal behaviors of discontinuous heat transfer in fractal media.

As it is known the Goodman’s heat balance integral method represents an approximate technique for generating functional solutions to thermal problems that were described by differential equations [1–3]. Based on theory of fractional calculus [4, 5], both the Stefan problem and the heat-balance integral method governed by a fractional diffusion equation were investigated [6–8]. However, we mention that the above problems are considered in the smooth condition.

On the other hand the heat transfer with nonsmooth condition (fractal space) is an interesting topic. The various phenomena in nanoscale heat (e.g., a charged jet in electrospinning process) can produce both continuous nanofibers and discontinuous nanoporous material. For continuous case, the classical Fourier law is valid. However, for nanoporous material, the fractal Fourier law should be used. For examples, the generalized transfer equation in a medium with fractal geometry was considered in [9], the Fourier’s law heat conduction in the discontinuous media was investigated in [10], and the heat transfer from discontinuous media was discussed in [11, 12].

Maybe, there are one-phase problems of fractal heat transfer in nanoporous materials. The aim of this paper is to study the fractal models for one-phase problems. The organization of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we introduce the concept of local fractional derivative and give some results on local fractional chain rule and the fractal complex transform. Section 3 is devoted to the fractal models for the one-phase problems of discontinuous transient heat transfer. Finally, conclusions are given in Section 4.

2. Preliminaries

In this section, we give some basic definitions and properties of the local fractional differential operator theory which are used further in this paper. In order to discuss the fractal behaviors of materials, we start with the fractal result derived from the fractal geometry.

Lemma 1 (see [11, 12]). Let be a subset of the real line and be a fractal. If is a bi-Lipschitz mapping, then there is for constants , and ,

such that for all , ,

For the convenience of the reader, we represent here the following results.

Following Lemma 1, we have [11]

such that

where is fractal dimension of .

Definition 2. If

with , for and , then is called local fractional continuous at , and it is denoted by

is local fractional continuous on the interval , denoted through [11–14]

if (5) is valid for .

Definition 3. Let . Local fractional derivative of of order at is defined as [11–14]

where .

If where , then we have [11, 14]

where and exist.

If where , then we have [11, 14]

where we assume that and exist.

Let us suppose that there is a relation as given below [14]

where and are constants and , then there exists an equation transformation pair, namely,

We stress on the fact that the above method is different from fractional complex transform method discussed in [15, 16]. The fractional complex transform method is proposed in [15, 16], while fractal complex transform method is based on the local fractional calculus theory [14].

3. Fractal Models for One-Phase Problems

We propose a one-phase fractal problem that describes the (dimensionless) melting of a fractal solid semi-infinite material initially at its melt temperature. The corresponding equations are given by the following expressions:

We mention that (13) governs the flow of heat in the fractal liquid region [11, 12], the fractal Stefan condition (14) describes the absorption of heat at the melt front where the fractal Stefan number [11] (it is also derived from fractal complex transform [14]). Equations (15) and (16) prescribe the temperature at the fractal fixed boundary and on the moving melt front , and (16) gives the initial temperature of the fractal semi-infinite solution domain. We notice that (13) is derived from the local fractional one-dimensional heat conduction equation with fractal media, which can be written in the form [11]

where denotes the thermal conductivity of the fractal material, which is related to fractal dimensions of materials. It is shown that the fractal dimensions of materials are an important characteristic value. Here, we consider the fractal Fourier flow, which is discontinuous; however, it is found that it is local fractional continuous. Like classical Fourier flow, its thermal conductivity is an approximate value for fractal one when [11].

The alternative form of the condition (14) can be derived from the fact that the total local fractional derivative of the temperature at is zero, that is, , which leads us to the following expression:

Then, by using (13) and (19) we conclude that

As a result, it leads us to the following final equation:

This result is no sense because fractal flow is local fractional continuous at . If is local fractional continuous, and is continuous, we deduce that fractal dimension is . Hence, we can obtain the classical results [2, 3].

Another alternative form of the condition (14) is derived from the fact that the total local fractional derivative of the temperature at is zero, that is,

which implies in our case that

By using (13) and (23), we finally obtain

which leads us to the final form as given below

4. Conclusions

In this paper we have proposed alternative fractal models for the one-phase problems of discontinuous transient heat transfer in fractal media. By applying the fractal complex transform and the chain rule within local fractional derivative, we have derived the one-phase problems of discontinuous transient heat transfer in fractal media, which describe the (dimensionless) melting of fractal solid semi-infinite materials initially at their melt temperatures. We consider the fractal models for the one-phase problems of discontinuous transient heat transfer. The fractal models for one-phase problems are classical examples when the fractional dimension is equal to 1. The discontinuous transient heat transfer in fractal media can serve as a good starting point for experimental investigations and further discussions.

Acknowledgments

This paper is sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, Grant U1204703), the Key Scientific and Technological Project of Henan Province (122102310004), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (HUST: 2012QN087, 2012QN088), and the Innovation Scientists and Technicians Troop Construction Projects of Zhengzhou City (10LJRC190, 121PRKXF658-4).

References

T. R. Goodman, “The heat-balance integral and its application to problems involving a change of phase,” Transactions of the ASME, vol. 80, pp. 335–342, 1958.

G. E. Bell, “A refinement of the heat balance integral method applied to a melting problem,” International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, vol. 21, no. 11, pp. 1357–1362, 1978.

A. S. Wood, “A new look at the heat balance integral method,” Applied Mathematical Modelling, vol. 25, no. 10, pp. 815–824, 2001.

A. A. Kilbas, H. M. Srivastava, and J. J. Trujillo, Theory and Applications of Fractional Differential Equations, vol. 204, Elsevier Science, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2006.

J. Sabatier, O. P. Agrawal, and J. A. Tenreiro Machado, Advances in Fractional Calculus: Theoretical Developments and Applications in Physics and Engineering, Springer, New York, NY, USA, 2007.

V. R. Voller, “An exact solution of a limit case Stefan problem governed by a fractional diffusion equation,” International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, vol. 53, no. 23-24, pp. 5622–5625, 2010.

J. Hristov, “Heat-balance integral to fractional (half-time) heat diffusion sub-model,” Thermal Science, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 291–316, 2010.

J. Hristov, “Approximate solutions to fractional sub-diffusion equations: the heat-balance integral method,” The European Physical Journal-Special Topics, vol. 193, pp. 229–243, 2011.

R. R. Nigmatullin, “The realization of the generalized transfer equation in a medium with fractal geometry,” Physica Status Solidi, vol. 133, no. 1, pp. 425–430, 1986.

J. H. He, “A new fractal derivation,” Thermal Science, vol. 15, pp. S145–S147, 2011.

X. J. Yang, Advanced Local Fractional Calculus and Its Applications, World Science Publisher, New York, NY, USA, 2012.

X. J. Yang, “Heat transfer in discontinuous media,” Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Its Applications, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 47–53, 2012.

X. J. Yang, Local Fractional Functional Analysis and Its Applications, Asian Academic Publisher Limited, Hong Kong, 2011.

X. J. Yang, “The zero-mass renormalization group differential equations and limit cycles in non-smooth initial value problems,” Prespacetime Journal, vol. 3, no. 9, pp. 913–923, 2012.

Z. B. Li and J. H. He, “Application of the fractional complex transform to fractional differential equations,” Nonlinear Science Letters A, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 121–126, 2011.

Z. B. Li and J. H. He, “Fractional complex transform for fractional differential equations,” Mathematical and Computational Applications, vol. 15, no. 5, pp. 970–973, 2010.