Heat flux or thermal flux, sometimes also referred to as heat flux density, heat-flow density or heat flow rate intensity is a flow of energy per unit area per unit time. In SI its units are watts per square metre (W/m2). It has both a direction and a magnitude, and so it is a vector quantity. To define the heat flux at a certain point in space, one takes the limiting case where the size of the surface becomes infinitesimally small.