capability pde toolbox, 3d application heat transfer

I have the following 3d heat transfer problem:

Horizontal aluminium plate partially covered by a thermal insulator at the upper and lower surface. The uncovered parts act as heat sinks by convection and radiation. The three edges are thermally insulated one edge is heated, where as the power of the heat varies with time. I would like to know the temperature distribution of the uncovered areas as a function of time.

Question: Is this problem solvable with the pde toolbox of Matlab?

Regard

Answer 1

[Ravi Kumar]

If your 3-D model that you discretize involve only cubes then you can model this in PDE. For example see attached image:

You can model this using:

model = createpde('thermal','transient')
gm = multicuboid(0.1,0.02,[0.1,0.1],'Zoffset',[0,0.1])
model.Geometry = gm;
pdegplot(model,'FaceLabels','on')

Then you can assign insulated BC on all the bottom cube faces. Assign heat generation on one or more of the top cube faces using funcitonal form of BC. Refer to thermalBC function.

Regards,

Ravi

Answer 2

[Urs Vokinger]

Thank you very much Ravi! Great!