This book is meant for students in their introductory heat transfer course— students who have learned calculus (through ordinary differential equations) and basic thermodynamics. We include the needed background in fluid mechanics, although students will be better off if they have had an introductory course in fluids. An integrated introductory course in thermofluid engineering should also be a sufficient background for the material here.
Our major objectives in rewriting the 1987 edition have been to bring the material up to date and make it as clear as possible. We have substantially revised the coverage of thermal radiation, unsteady conduction, and mass transfer. We have replaced most of the old physical property data with the latest reference data. New correlations have been introduced for forced and natural convection and for convective boiling. The treatment of thermal resistance has been reorganized. Dozens of new problems have been added. And we have revised the treatment of turbulent heat transfer to include the use of the law of the wall. In a number of places we have rearranged material to make it flow better, and we have made many hundreds of small changes and corrections so that the text will be more comfortable and reliable. Lastly, we have eliminated Roger Eichhorn’s fine chapter on numerical analysis, since that topic is now most often covered in specialized courses on computation.