Talk:Thermal diffusivity

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Help with this template Comments: edit – history – watch – refresh any body can tel me the thermal diffusivity of steel? thanks

don't be a mechanical engineer. we use this all the time..and i hate thermal systems.

Very interesting parameter for Transient Analysis. As to being Mechanical Engineer(Thermal), I love it.

Does anyone have a link to a table of mass diffussivity coefficients?

[edit] redirect appropriateness

There's apparently at least 3 kinds of diffusivity, including thermal, mass, and momentum. I'm thinking thermal shouldn't get a monopoly on the subject. (I don't have the expertise to be sure). Ojcit 17:21, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Reply: I agree, it seems a bit strange that diffusivity redirects here, since in my experience the term normally refers to mass diffusion, and this quantity would typically be referred to as the thermal conductivity.

[edit] explanation

I think it is a measure for how fast the heat (or actually the standard deviation of the heat) spreads from a certain point, shouldn't this be mentioned somewhere?

[edit] Symbol usage

Symbols $κ$ and $k$ for thermal diffusivity and thermal conductivity look very similar, and k is widely used for almost any coefficient. I suggest to use D and $λ$ instead. The formula would be:

$D = {\lambda \over {\rho c_p}}$