Obtenção de autovalores de soluções em série de problemas de condução de calor com condições de contorno convectivas

Abstract

Apart from simple problems of heat conduction in which the temperature depends only on the time or just on a position coordinate, the others lead to partial differential equations, which have solutions in terms of series obtained from various methods such as separation variables, superposition, the Green's function, the technique of integral transform, the Laplace transform and Duhamel's theorem. These solutions depend on eigenvalues, which are obtained from the roots of transcendental equations that in most cases cannot be expressed in closed form, but they can be obtained from tables, approximate expressions and iterative expressions. The objective of this study is to find new expressions for these roots, which are simpler or have more accuracy than the existing ones. The three transcendental equations that are considered here are the most frequently used among those that have not closed solution, and appear when the boundary conditions are convective. A new family of iterative functions is proposed, which includes several classical functions and, in particular, the entire family of Householder methods. A new method is obtained which has faster convergence to the present equations. Although the tables of roots present values with various significant digits, real problems hardly lead to a value of the independent variable that can be directly found, making it necessary to use interpolation. Then, the accuracy of the roots obtained from these tables is limited by the accuracy of the interpolation, which can be compared with the approximate expressions. Existing expressions are analyzed using the root properties. An approximate expression developed for the first root of the three equations is based on the fixed point method, another is obtained from the application of the concept of MiniMax to readjust expressions of others authors, and the last one has an algebraic form. The MiniMax concept is not obtained through any method that can be considered elementary, and two new methods are developed to apply it. Modern computer algebra systems are used to generate new approximate expressions for the first root, but it is found that they can be improved by analytical methods. Expansion in continuous fractions is adopted and the Padé approximation to obtain expressions of greater accuracy. Expressions leading to good results for the first root are generalized so that they serve for the other roots. Finally, a comparison is made considering all approximate expressions, indicating what are considered the best.