Transient thermal toolkit

Placeholder case study — to be replaced with the real write-up.

Overview

A small, focused toolkit for modeling transient heat transfer in simple geometries. The goal was a tool I could trust for quick first-order answers before committing to a full FEA run — fast enough to sweep parameters, accurate enough to make decisions.

Approach

• Implemented an explicit finite-difference solver with a stability-bounded time step, validated against analytical lumped-capacitance solutions.
• Wrapped it in a CLI so a batch of cases could be defined in a config file and exported to CSV for downstream analysis.
• Kept configuration values cleanly separated from the solver logic.

Results

The toolkit cut the time to a first thermal estimate from hours to minutes, and the CSV output dropped straight into the plotting workflow used for reporting.

What I’d do next

Add 2-D conduction and a small validation suite against published benchmark cases.