Heat transfer analysis in internally-cooled fuel elements by means of a conformal mapping approach

Abstract The present paper deals with an approximate solution of the steady-state heat conduction problem in internally cooled fuel elements of fast breeder reactors. Explicit expressions for the dimensionless temperature distribution in terms of the governing physical and geometrical parameters are determined by means of a coupled conformal mapping-variational approach. The results obtained are found to be in very good agreement with those calculated by means of a finite element code.