Transient heat conduction in three-dimensional glass/epoxy composite plate

In this manuscript, transient heat transfer through a three-dimensional glass/epoxy composite plate is investigated by using numerical FD and FE methods. The FD solution is obtained by applying the method of forward time center space to the heat conduction partial differential equation. Proposed solution is also applicable to multidirectional composite laminates with different fiber orientations subjected to an external heat source and free convection heat transfer boundary conditions. Contours of temperature and heat flux vectors of the composite plate obtained by FDM are compared with the results of the commercial Abaqus software. The overall comparison shows that the finite element method over the finite difference method predicted better results in terms of temperature distributions.