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Hi, very interesting question. The answer is found in HeatBalFiniteDifferenceManager.cc
since it appears to not be documented elsewhere (see e.g. line 1934 onward in the IntInterfaceNodeEqns
function).
At a node separating 2 massless materials, Cp and ρ are 0 and simplifying the implicit heat equation in your post yields
Tj+1i=Ri−1Tj+1i+1+Ri+1Tj+1i−1Ri+1+Ri−1,
where Tj+1i is the temperature at node i at the newest timestep j+1, and R is thermal resistance. Transient behavior at node i may be driven by transient boundary conditions or propagate from non-massless materials in the model. This is the equation used by EnergyPlus in this situation (line 1942 in the code).
When a node separates a massless material (e.g. on the left at i−1) and a non-massless material (e.g. on the right at i+1), Cp and ρ are retained for the non-massless material in the implicit heat equation. However, the kEΔx term corresponding to the massless material is related to the thermal resistance of the massless material Ri−1 and essentially replaced by 1Ri−1 (line 2080 in the code).