A concept of multi-scale modeling for radiative heat transfer in particle polydispersions

Abstract

To take the local thermal nonequilibrium between particles and the nonuniformity of temperature within a single particle into account, a concept of multi-scale modeling of radiative transfer is presented. Particles are considered to interact with thermal radiation on both micro-scale of a single particle and meso-scale of a particle cell to produce radiative source term at the local or meso-scale level of a particle cell for the modeling of radiative transfer at macro-scale of overall particle system. The accurate modeling of radiative transfer in particle polydispersions are related to the modeling of radiative transfer in following three different scales: macro-scale of the overall particle system, meso-scale of particle cell, and micro-scale of single particle. Two examples are taken to show the necessity of multi-scale modeling for radiative transfer in particle polydispersions. The results show that omitting local thermal nonequilibrium and nonuniformity will result in errors for the solution of radiative heat transfer to some extent, and the multi-scale modeling is necessary for the radiative transfer in particle system with large local thermal nonequilibrium and nonuniformity.