THE INFLUENCE OF SURFACE MELTING OR SURFACE VAPORIZATION ON THE TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION IN A PLATE,

During a lightning stroke on the wing of an airplane, the surface may become heated until melting or vaporization of the metal occurs. To gain some insight into the significance of this melting or vaporization on the temperature of the inner surface of the wing near the fuel, an approximate solution was obtained for the temperature in a plate when one surface is heated uniformly at a constant rate sufficiently long that melting occurs. It was assumed that the melted material is removed as soon as it reaches the melting temperature. The resulting equation of the conservation of heat flux at the melting surface, which includes the absorption of energy from the latent heat of melting, and the heat equation with appropriate moving boundary conditions yields a coupled system of differential equations to be solved for the amount of melt and for the temperature in the plate. An iteration procedure was developed and the first approximation obtained. Author