5.1 Introduction

The flow of thermal energy from matter occupying one region in space to matter occupying a different region in space is known as heat transfer. Heat transfer can occur by three main methods: conduction, convection, and radiation. Physical models involving conduction and/or convection only are the simplest (Section  5.2), while buoyancy-driven flow or natural convection (Section  5.2.2), and radiation models (Section  5.3) are more complex. Depending on your problem, ANSYS FLUENT will solve a variation of the energy equation that takes into account the heat transfer methods you have specified. ANSYS FLUENT is also able to predict heat transfer in periodically repeating geometries ( this section in the separate User's Guide), thus greatly reducing the required computational effort in certain cases.

For more information about using heat transfer models in ANSYS FLUENT, see this section , this section , and this section in the separate User's Guide.