Other applications

Abstract

In this chapter we examine further applications where thermal wave propagation is likely to be important, or we include applications of the ideas used in deriving the thermal wave models. This chapter is split into four sub-headings. The first two deal with applications of the various heat propagation theories presented earlier in this book. The second two sub-chapters deal with applications of the mathematical ideas which were used to develop a theory of finite speed heat propagation, but are applied to other problems in real life. These classes of problem are in traffic flow and in biological / medical contexts. It is worth observing that in twelve of the fourteen subsections the key idea involves essentially the model of Cattaneo. Thus, one should not underestimate the influence the paper of (Cattaneo, 1948) has in the field reported in this book.