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IC/2005/104

United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization and International Atomic Energy Agency THE ABDUS SALAM INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR THERORETICAL PHYSICS

SOLVING MICROWAVE HEATING MODEL USING HERMITE-PAD APPROXIMATION TECHNIQUE

O.D. Makinde1 Applied Mathematics Department, University of Limpopo, Private Bag X1106, Sovenga 0727, South Africa and The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy.

Abstract We employ the Hermite-Pad approximation method to explicitly construct the approximate solution of steady state reaction-diffusion equations with source term that arises in modeling microwave heating in an infinite slab with isothermal walls. In particular, we consider the case where the source term decreases spatially and increases with temperature. The important properties of the temperature fields including bifurcations and thermal criticality are discussed.

MIRAMARE TRIESTE November 2005

Group Junior Associate of ICTP. makindeo@ul.ac.za

1. Introduction Microwaves are a form of electromagnetic radiation; that is, they are waves of electrical and magnetic energy moving together through space. Electromagnetic radiation ranges from the energetic x-rays to the less energetic radio frequency waves used in broadcasting. Microwaves fall into the radio frequency band of electromagnetic radiation. Microwaves should not be confused with x-rays, which are more powerful. Microwaves have three characteristics that allow them to be used in cooking: they are reflected by metal; they pass through glass, paper, plastic, and similar materials; and they are absorbed by foods, (Hill and Marchant, 1996). This technology has found new applications in many industrial processes, such as those involving melting, smelting, sintering, drying, and joining, (Kriegsmann, 1992). Heating by microwave radiation constitutes a reaction diffusion problem with radiative heat source term and the long-time behaviour of the solutions in space may lead to appearance of hotspots in the system i.e. isolated regions of excessive heating (Coleman, 1991). In order to predict the occurrence of such phenomena it is necessary to analyze a simplified mathematical model from which insight might be gleaned into an inherently complex physical process. The theory of reaction diffusion equations is quite elaborate and their solution in rectangular, cylindrical and spherical coordinate remains an extremely important problem of practical relevance in the engineering sciences. Several numerical approaches have developed in the last few decades, e.g. finite differences, spectral method, shooting method, etc. to tackle this problem. More recently, ideas on classical analytical methods have experienced a revival, in connection with the proposition of novel hybrid numericalanalytical schemes for nonlinear differential equations. One such trend is related to the Hermite-Pad approximation approach, (Guttamann 1989; Makinde 1999; Tourigny and Drazin 2000). This approach, over the last few years, proved itself as a powerful benchmarking tool and a potential alternative to traditional numerical techniques in various applications in sciences and engineering. This semi-numerical approach is also extremely useful in the validation of purely numerical scheme.

In this paper, we intend to construct an approximate solution for a steady state reaction diffusion equation that models microwave heating in an infinite slab with isothermal walls using perturbation technique together with a special type of the HermitePad approximants. The mathematical formulation of the problem is established and solved in sections two and three. In section four we introduce and apply some rudiments of Hermite-Pad approximation technique. Both numerical and graphical results are presented and discussed quantitatively with respect to various parameters embedded in the system in section five.

2. Mathematical Formulation Consider a microwave heating in an infinite slab with isothermal walls as shown in figure (1). It is assumed that energy dissipation has a negligible effect on the electromagnetic field and so the temperature distribution can be investigated in isolation.

T=T0 y

y=a

Microwave heating

T=T0

y = -a

Figure 1: Geometry of the problem

For the simplest microwave heating model, the steady state nonlinear reaction diffusion equation with source term that describes the thermal behaviour can be written in the form (Hill and Pincombe, 1991);

d 2T + Ee y T n = 0 , 2 dy

(1)

with the following boundary conditions:

dT (0) = 0, dy

T (a) = T0 ,

(2)

where T is the temperature, T0 the wall temperature, n the thermal absorptivity index, the constant thermal conductivity of the material, E the amplitude of the incident radiation,

electric field amplitude decay rate, (x, y) distances measured in the axial and normal direction respectively and a the slab half width. Furthermore, it is important to note that the value of n depends upon; the material under consideration, the temperature range under investigation and the frequency of the microwave radiation. At higher frequencies (say 1010 Hz), materials such as fused glass are very accurately approximated by linear and quadratic power (n=1, 2). At lower frequencies, higher values of thermal absorptivity index n > 2 will be required (Hill and Marchant, 1996).

Introducing the following dimensionless variables into equations (1) and (2):

Ea2T0n1

y T , k = a , y = , T = , a T0

(3)

we obtain the dimensionless governing equation together with the corresponding boundary conditions as (neglecting the bar symbol for clarity); d 2T + e ky T n = 0 , dy 2 with
dT (0) = 0, dy T (1) = 1 , (5)

(4)

where and k represents the thermal absorptivity and electric field decay rate parameters respectively.

3. Method of Solution
For n =1, equation (4) becomes a linear boundary value problem and can easily be solved. The exact solution is

 J1 2 k Y0 2 k e ky T ( y) = k k e 2 e 2 J1 2 k Y0 2 k + Y1 2 k J 0 2 k J 0 2 Y1 2 k k e ky + , k k e 2 e 2 Y0 2 J 0 2 + Y1 2 J1 2 k k k k

(6)

where J0, J1 are Bessel functions of first kind and Y0, Y1 are Bessel functions of second kind. For n > 1, the problem becomes nonlinear and it is convenient to take a power series expansion in the thermal absorptivity parameter , i.e.,
T ( y ) = Ti i .
i =0

(7)

Substituting the solution series (7) into equations (4)-(5) and collecting the coefficients of like powers of , we obtained and solved the equations governing the coefficients of solution series iteratively. The solution for the temperature and velocity fields are given as

T ( y) = 1
k

k 4k 2 k k ( y 1) ky + 6ke 4k e + 8 + ke + 4e 8e k ( y 1) 4kye k ( y 1) e k ( 2 y 1) ) + O(3 )

(ky k + e ky e k )

2 ne k
4

(4ky + 4k 2 ye k 6kye k 4k 3e k

(8)

Using the computer symbolic algebra package (MAPLE), we obtained the first 22 terms of the above solution series (8) as well as the series for the material maximum temperature Tmax = T ( y = 0; , , n > 1) .

4. Thermal Criticality and Bifurcation Study

The concept of criticality or non-existence of steady state solution of nonlinear reaction diffusion problems for certain parameter values is extremely important from an application point of view. This characterizes the thermal stability properties of the materials under consideration and the onset of thermal runaway phenomenon, Makinde (2004). In order to

determine the possibility of thermal criticality in the system together with the evolution of temperature field as the thermal absorptivity parameter increases in value, we employ a special type of Hermite-Pad approximation technique. The procedure is briefly illustrated as follows; Suppose the partial sum
U
N 1

( ) =

N 1 i=0

a i i = U ( ) + O ( N ) as 0,

(9)

is given. We shall make the simplest hypothesis in the contest of nonlinear problems by assuming the U() is the local representation of an algebraic function of . Therefore, we seek an expression of the form
d Fd ( , U N 1 ) = A0 N ( ) + A1dN ( )U (1) + A2 N ( )U ( 2 ) + A3dN ( )U ( 3 ) ,

(10)

such that A0N()=1, AiN ( ) = and

b
j =1 ij

d +i

j 1

(11)

Fd ( ,U ) = O(N +1 ) as 0,

(12)

where d 1 , i =1, 2, 3. The condition (11) normalizes the Fd and ensures that the order of series AiN increases as i and d increase in value. There are 3(2+d) undetermined coefficients bij in expression (11). The requirement (12) reduces the problem to a system of N linear equations for the unknown coefficients of Fd. Therefore for consistency of the linear system, we shall take N=3(2+d). (13)

Equation (12) is a new special type of Hermite-Pad approximants. Both the algebraic and differential approximants form of equation (12) are considered. For instance, we let U(1)=U, U(2)=U2, U(3)=U3, (14)

and obtain a cubic Pad approximant. This enables us to obtain solution branches of the underlying problem in addition to the one represented by the original series. In the same manner, we let U(1)=U, U(2)=DU, U(3)=D2U, (15)

in equation (11), where D is the differential operator given by D=d/d. This leads to a second order differential approximants. It is an extension of the integral approximants idea by Hunter and Baker (1979) and enables us to obtain the dominant singularity in the temperature field i.e. by equating the coefficient A3N() in equation (12) to zero. Hence, some of the zeroes of A3( d ) may provide approximations of the singularities of the series U N and we expect that the accuracy of the singularities will ensure the accuracy of the approximants. Furthermore, it is well known that the dominant behaviour of a solution of differential equations can often be written as Guttamann (1989), for m 0, 1, 2,... K ( c ) m as c, U ( ) m K (c ) ln c for m = 0, 1, 2,...

(16)

where K is some constant and c is the critical point with the exponent m. The critical exponent m can easily be found by using Newtons polygon algorithm. Meanwhile, for algebraic equations, the only singularities that are structurally stable are simple turning points. Hence, in practice, one almost invariably obtains mc = 1/2. If we assume a singularity of algebraic type as in equation (16), then the exponent may be approximated by A ( ) (17) m N = 1 2 N CN . DA3 N (CN )

For details on the above procedure, interested readers can see Vainberg and Trenogin (1974), Common (1982), Sergeyev, and Goodson (1998), Makinde (1999), Tourigny and Drazin (2000), Makinde (2005), etc.
5. Results and Discussion

The bifurcation procedure above is applied on the first 22 terms of the solution series and we obtained the results as shown in tables (1) and (2) below:

Table 1: Computations for dominant singularity showing the procedure rapid convergence for k = 1, n = 2.

d 1 2 3 4 5

N 9 12 15 18 21

c
0.798406706029926 0.798419517502792 0.798419517935786 0.798419517941164 0.798419517941164

mcN 0.4978996 0.4999999 0.5000000 0.5000000 0.5000000

Table 2: Computations showing thermal criticality for k = 1.

c
mcN

2 0.7984195179 0.5000000

3 0.4713264479 0.5000000

4 0.3349306829 0.5000000

5 0.2598772782 0.5000000

Table 3: Computations showing thermal criticality for n = 2.

c
mcN

1 0.7984195179 0.5000000

2 1.0087045320 0.5000000

3 1.2308810985 0.5000000

4 1.4611429164 0.5000000

The result in table (1) shows the rapid convergence of our procedure for the dominant singularity (i.e. c) together with its corresponding critical exponent c with gradual increase in the number of series coefficients utilized in the approximants. In table (2), we noticed that the magnitude of thermal criticality decreases with increase in the value of thermal absorptivity index (n) in the system. This shows clearly that the higher power of thermal absorptivity will enhance the early appearance of thermal runaway in some materials due to excessive heating. Table (3) shows that the magnitude of thermal criticality increases with increased values of electric field decay rate parameter (k). Hence, increasing the decay rate of electric field in microwave heating will delay the possibility of thermal runaway or ignition in the system. Figure (2) shows a transverse increase in the material temperature with maximum temperature along the centerline of the slab. Similar temperature profile is observed for the case of n = 1 as represented by equation (6). However,

further increase in temperature is noticed by increasing the value of . In figure (3), we observed that the material temperature increases with higher values of absorptivity index (n) due to increase in the intensity microwave radiation absorptivity index and decreases with increase in electric field decay rate (k). This is in agreement with the results of Hill and Marchant (1996). A slice of the bifurcation diagram for n >1 is shown in figure (4). In particular, for every k > 0, there is a critical value c (a turning point) such that, for 0 < c there are two solutions (labelled I and II) and the solution II diverges to infinity as 0.

Figure 2: Temperature profile for n=2; k=1; _______=0.1; ooooooo =0.3; +++++++ =0.5

Figure 3: Temperature profile at T(y=0); =0.5; k=1; _______k=1.0; ooooooo k=2.0; +++++++ k=3.0

6.0 Tmax 3 .0 II

c
1.0 I 0 0.5 1.0

Figure (4): A slice of approximate bifurcation diagram in the (, T(0; n>1, k)) plane.

6. Conclusion

The steady state reaction-diffusion equation with source term that arises in modeling microwave heating in an infinite slab with isothermal walls is studied. Exact solution is obtained for the linear case while the nonlinear problem is solved using the perturbation technique coupled with a special type of the Hermite-Pad approximants. The possibility of thermal runaway phenomenon is observed and the corresponding thermal criticality values are obtained and clearly demonstrated on the bifurcation diagram.
Acknowledgements

This work was done within the framework of the Associateship Scheme of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy. Financial support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency is acknowledged.

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References

1. Coleman, C. J., (1991), On the microwave hotspot problem. J. Aust. Math. Soc. Ser. B, Vol. 33, 1-8. 2. Common, A. K., (1982), Applications of Hermite- Pad approximants to water waves and the harmonic oscillator on a lattice, J. Phys. A 15, 3665-3677. 3. Guttamann, A. J., (1989), Asymptotic analysis of power series expansions, Phase Transitions and Critical Phenomena, C. Domb and J. K. Lebowitz, eds. Academic Press, New York, pp. 1-234. 4. Hill, J. M., and Pincombe, A. H., (1991), Some similarity temperature profiles for the mirowave heating of a half-space. J. Aust. Math. Soc. Ser. B, Vol. 33, 290-320. 5. Hill, J. M., and Marchant, T. R., (1996), Modelling microwave heating. Appl. Math. Modelling, Vol. 20 (3), 3-15. 6. Hunter, D. L., and Baker, G. A., (1979), Methods of series analysis III: Integral approximant methods, Phys. Rev. B 19, 3808-3821. 7. Kriegsmann, G. A., (1992), Thermal runaway in microwave heated ceramics. A one-dimensional model. J. Appl. Phys. 71, 1960-1966. 8. Makinde, O. D., (1999), Extending the utility of perturbation series in problems of laminar flow in a porous pipe and a diverging channel, J. Austral. Math. Soc. Ser. B 41, 118-128. 9. Makinde, O. D., (2004), Exothermic explosions in a slab: a case study of series summation technique. Inter. Comm. Heat Mass Transfer. 31, 1227-1231. 10. Makinde, O. D., (2005), Strong exothermic explosions in a cylindrical pipe: A case study of series summation technique. Mechanics Research Communications Vol. 32, 191-195. 11. Sergeyev, A. V and Goodson, D. Z. (1998), Summation of asymptotic expansions of multiple valued functions using algebraic approximations-application to anharmonic oscillators. J. Phys. A31, 4301-4317. 12. Tourigny, Y., and Drazin, P. G., (2000), The asymptotic behaviour of algebraic approximants. Proc. Roy. Soc. London A456, 1117-1137. 13. Vainberg, M. M., and Trenogin V. A., (1974), Theory of branching of solutions of nonlinear equations, Noordoff, Leyden.

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