Heat transfer plays a significantly important role in practical engineering. In this work, superposition method is applied to heat transfer simulation. In the superposition method, a representative element is selected. A pulse of heat is applied to the representative element to produce the data map by finite element method. The temperature history for the nodes of interest is recorded in the data map. To take the boundary effect into consideration, boundary elements are also selected to produce data maps. In the superposition method, time and space shifts are made in the data maps and the temperature increment is summed up. The temperature for the nodes of interest can be obtained. Good agreement is reached between the superposition method and the full-scale finite element method. The computational efficiency of superposition method is extremely higher than finite element simulation, especially for large-scale and long-time simulation. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.