2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/201904We model the behaviour of a relativistic spherically symmetric shearing fluid undergoing gravitational collapse with heat flux. It is demonstrated that the governing equation for the gravitational behaviour is a Riccati equation. We show that the Riccati equation admits two classes of new solutions in closed form. We regain particular models, obtained in previous investigations, as special cases. A significant feature of our solutions is the general spatial dependence in the metric functions which allows for a wider study of the physical features of the model, such as the behaviour of the causal temperature in inhomogeneous spacetimes.13 pages, To appear in J. Math. PhysGeneral Relativity and Quantum Cosmologytext