Natural Convection Cooling of an Electrical Conductor Wire

The conductor wire connected to an electrical device generates and dissipates heat. For the successful design of the device, therefore, it is essential to analyze thermal response of the conductor wire in conjunction with the device. In this study, an approximate analytical method for the steady state wire temperature distribution is presented. Also, a finite difference solution for the transient behavior is given. For the steady state solution the conductor wire alone can be analyzed in a decoupled manner, but not for the transient case. The agreement between the steady solution and the transient solution at t=∞is excellent.