Open ended design process

Open ended design process:
The most important aspect of the design process is to ensure that the air is heated to the
appropriate temperature. Outside of this, it is up to you to come up with design criteria.
Some ideas to be considered are outlined below:
• Consider the energy required to heat the tubes to their steady state operating
temperature
• Consider the cost of materials to build the heater
• Consideration of parasitic heat losses (heat losses to the ambient environment)
• Set restrictions on the size of the heater cross-section
• Consider the temperatures of the rods. Are they realistic?
• Consider whether the rod can be lumped or if you must consider spatial temperature
variation
Again, the design process is open ended. You are not required to consider all of the above
and you should impose additional limitations and design considerations as you see fit.
I recommend developing an iterative technique to determine the temperature of the rods and
air. I recommend grouping columns of rods together (in other words, treat all rods in a
particular column as having the same temperature and heat transfer coefficient). Also,
double check that the rod can be treated as lumped in your analysis. If it cannot, additional