Topic summary
Lumped system analysis
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Lumped-element model.
Thermal systems
A lumped-capacitance model, also called lumped system analysis, reduces a thermal system to a number of discrete “lumps” and assumes that the temperature difference inside each lump is negligible. This approximation is useful to simplify otherwise complex differential heat equations. It was developed as a mathematical analog of electrical capacitance, although it also includes thermal analogs of electrical resistance as well.