The dual-phase-lag heat transfer model is applied to investigate the transient heat conduction in an infinitely long solid cylinder for an exponentially decaying pulse boundary heat flux and for a short-pulse boundary heat flux. A hybrid application of the Laplace transform method and the control volume scheme is used to obtain the numerical solutions. Comparison between the numerical results and the analytic solution for an exponentially decaying heat flux pulse evidences the accuracy of the present numerical results. Results further show that the present numerical scheme can overcome the mathematical difficulties to analyze such problems. Effects of the thermal lag ratio tau(q)/tau(T), the shift time tau(q)-tau(T), the function form of heating pulse, and geometry of medium on the behavior of heat transfer are investigated. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.