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Purpose This paper aims to develop an efficient numerical method for nonlinear transient heat conduction problems with local radiation boundary conditions and nonlinear heat sources. Design/methodology/approach Based on the physical characteristic of the transient heat conduction and the distribution characteristic of the Green’s function, a quasi-superposition principle is presented for the transient heat conduction problems with local nonlinearities. Then, an efficient method is developed, which indicates that the solution of the original nonlinear problem can be derived by solving some nonlinear problems with small structures and a linear problem with the original structure. These problems are independent of each other and can be solved simultaneously by the parallel computing technique. Findings Within a small time step, the nonlinear thermal loads can only induce significant temperature responses of the regions near the positions of the nonlinear thermal loads, whereas the temperature responses of the remaining regions are very close to zero. According to the above physical characteristic, the original nonlinear problem can be transformed into some nonlinear problems with small structures and a linear problem with the original structure. Originality/value An efficient and accurate numerical method is presented for transient heat conduction problems with local nonlinearities, and some numerical examples demonstrate the high efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method.