Lumped Capacitance Method (LCM)
The simplest situation in an unsteady heat transfer process is to neglect the temperature distribution inside the solid and only deals with the heat transfer between the solid and the ambient fluids. In other words, we are going to assume the temperature inside the solid is constant and equals to the surface temperature. Let us look at a practical example about a plasma spray process involving the injection of tiny particles into a plasma jet at a very high temperature (see web page for more information). These particles will eventually melt and impinging on the processing surface and solidify to form a layer of protecting coating.