In food process engineering, heat transfer is very often in the unsteady state, in which temperatures are changing and materials are warming or cooling. Unfortunately, study of heat flow under these conditions is complicated. In fact, it is the subject for study in a substantial branch of applied mathematics, involving finding solutions for the Fourier equation written in terms of partial differentials in three dimensions. There are some cases that can be simplified and handled by elementary methods, and also charts have been prepared which can be used to obtain numerical solutions under some conditions of practical importance.
A simple case of unsteady state heat transfer arises from the heating or cooling of solid bodies made from good thermal conductors, for example a long cylinder, such as a meat sausage or a metal bar, being cooled in air. The rate at which heat is being transferred to the air from the surface of the cylinder is given by eqn. (5.4)
q = dQ/dt = hsA(Ts - Ta)
where Ta is the air temperature and Ts is the surface temperature.