THERMAL ANALYSIS OF AN INCANDESCENT LAMP IN A ROOM

Excessive heat generation in Incandescent bulbs had led to quantum energy wastage, low life span of the bulbs and its continuous substitutions with other types of bulbs like fluorescent lamps , compact fluorescent lamps (CFL), cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL), high-intensity discharge lamps, and light-emitting diode lamps (LED). In order to stem these situations, there is a need to understand the physics of heat generation in Incandescent bulbs. To this end, this work developed a mathematical model to unravel the thermal process in an Incandescent bulb, through the Automatic Dynamic Incremental Non-linear Analysis (ADINA) simulation of the developed model; the work investigated the effect of temperature distribution situation, heat flux rate and life time prediction of the bulbs filaments. It was found that for every increase or decrease in temperature along the radius from the centre of the bulb, there is a corresponding increase or decrease in the quantity of heat transfer. It was also found that the lifetime of the bulb depends on the operating temperature, content uniformity, thickness and length of the filament used and the type of filling gas employed. The study concluded that for life span of Incandescent bulbs to be high, the bulb heat flux must be low and temperature distribution must be relatively uniform and of little difference in magnitude across board in the tube.