Further developments towards a new virtual‐pulse time integral methodology for general non‐linear transient thermal analysis

New developments of describing the theoretical basis towards an effective virtual‐pulse (VIP) time integral methodology are proposed for general non‐linear transient heat transfer problems. Primarily to validate the proposed methodology of computation, simple numerical test cases are provided and comparisons are also drawn with the implicit second‐order‐accurate Crank‐Nicolson method. For the models tested, the proposed method has comparable or improved accuracy and stability characteristics. The VIP methodology introduced here for tackling non‐linear thermal problems offers attractive features and is a viable alternative to traditional time‐stepping practices. Efforts are underway to demonstrate the practical applicability to multi‐dimensional thermal analysis.