Experimental bench for the study of steady-state and transient heat conduction in metals

The TH451 is built around this distinction. A precisely regulated hot-water circuit heats one end of a cylindrical metal rod; a water-cooled heat sink conditions the other. Twelve thermocouples embedded along each rod — designed to minimise thermal disturbance and measure true core temperature — capture the full spatial distribution of temperature under both equilibrium and dynamic conditions. A sudden change in cooling-water flow rate generates a clean thermal step that propagates through the specimen, making transient conduction directly visible and measurable. Five interchangeable rods in different metals and two lengths complete a systematic experimental programme that carries students from Fourier's law through to the numerical methods used in industrial thermal simulation.

The following experiments form a coherent progression from classical steady-state theory through to the time-dependent partial differential equations that underpin modern computational heat transfer.