A transfer matrix method associated with the dual reciprocity boundary element method (DRBEM) is developed for the study of transient heat conduction problems in presence of moving heat sources. In this method, the time integration is processed by an iteration transfer matrix method, the coefficient matrices are calculated only once, and no domain integration is required. It is shown that the application of DRBEM results in considerable savings in computation time and data preparation. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the method by comparing the computed results with either published results or solutions using the finite element method. While only two-dimensional problems are presented in the paper, the method can be readily extended to three-dimensional problems to handle more complicated contact problems. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.