The ${\rm sech}\left( {\hat{\xi }} \right)$-Type Profiles: A Swiss-Army Knife for Exact Analytical Modeling of Thermal Diffusion and Wave Propagation in Graded Media

Abstract

This work deals with the exact analytical modeling of transfer phenomena in heterogeneous materials exhibiting one-dimensional continuous variations of their properties. Regarding heat transfer, it has recently been shown that by applying a Liouville transformation and multiple Darboux transformations, infinite sequences of solvable profiles of thermal effusivity can be constructed together with the associated temperature (exact) solutions, all in closed-form expressions (vs. the diffusion-time variable and with a growing number of parameters). In addition, a particular class of profiles, the so-called ${\rm sech}\left( {\hat{\xi }} \right)$-type profiles, exhibit high agility and at the same time parsimony. In this paper we delve further into the description of these solvable profiles and their properties. Most importantly, their quadrupole formulation is provided, enabling smooth synthetic profiles of effusivity of arbitrary complexity to be built, and allowing the corresponding temperature dynamic response to be obtained very easily thereafter. Examples are given with increasing variability of the effusivity and an increasing number of elementary profiles. These highly flexible profiles are equally relevant to providing an exact analytical solution to wave propagation problems in 1D graded media (i.e., Maxwell’s equations, the acoustic equation, the telegraph equation, etc.). From now on, whether it be for diffusion-like or wave-like problems, when the leading properties present (possibly piecewise-) continuously heterogeneous profiles, the classical staircase model can be advantageously replaced by a “high-level” quadrupole model consisting of one or more ${\rm sech}\left( {\hat{\xi }} \right)$-type profiles, which makes the latter a true Swiss-Army knife for analytical modeling.