General Rules for Thermal Safety Assessment

At first glance, the data and concepts used for the assessment of thermal risks may appear complex and difficult to overlook. In practice, however, two rules simplify the procedure and reduce the amount of work to the required minimum  

Simplification As a first approach the problem should be simplified as far as possible. This allows limiting the volume of data to the essential minimum. It results in an economic problem solution. 

Worst-case approach In case approximations are to be made, one should ensure that the approximation is conservative, in the sense that it leads to majoring the risks in the assessment procedure. 

When this approach is used, if the results obtained by the simplified approach allow the intended operation, it should be ensured that sufficiently large safety margins are applied. In case it leads to a negative assessment, where the conclusion is that the operation cannot be performed safely under these simplified assumptions, it means that more precise data are required to make the final decision. By doing so, the data set is adjusted to the difficulty of the problem. These rules are systematically used in the worked examples in this book. 

---