Visualizing Conductive and Convective Heat Transfer using Thermographic Techniques

This work explores the educational applications of thermography in teaching conductive and convective heat transfer concepts to undergraduate students. Thermography helps students effectively visualize heat transfer phenomena particularly in two and three dimensions. Experiments were designed to demonstrate one-dimensional heat transfer in metal rods, two dimensional heat transfer in a metal plate subject to given boundary conditions and convective heat transfer in fluid. The data obtained through these experiments, including thermal imaging video clips, was made available to students enrolled in instrumentation and physics courses. Using these thermographic data, students could physically observe heat transfer phenomena that otherwise would have been difficult to visualize.