Chapter 3 - Radiative Properties of Real Surfaces

Abstract

Ideally, electromagnetic wave theory may be used to predict all radiative properties of any material (reflectivity and transmissivity at an interface, absorption and emission within a medium). For a variety of reasons, however, the usefulness of the electromagnetic wave theory is extremely limited in practice. For one, the theory incorporates a large number of assumptions that are not necessarily good for all materials. Most importantly, electromagnetic wave theory neglects the effects of surface conditions on the radiative properties of these surfaces, instead assuming optically smooth interfaces of precisely the same (homogeneous) material as the bulk material—conditions that are very rarely met in practice. In the real world surfaces of materials are generally coated to varying degree with contaminants, oxide layers, and the like, and they usually have a certain degree of roughness (which is rarely even known on a quantitative basis). Thus, the greatest usefulness of the electromagnetic wave theory is that it provides the engineer with a tool to augment sparse experimental data through intelligent interpolation and extrapolation. Still, it is important to realize that radiative properties of opaque materials depend exclusively on the makeup of a very thin surface layer and, thus, may, for the same material, change from batch to batch and, indeed, overnight. This behavior is in contrast to most other thermophysical properties, such as thermal conductivity, which are bulk properties and as such are insensitive to surface contamination, roughness, and so on. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, formerly NBS) has recommended to reserve the ending “-ivity” for radiative properties of pure, perfectly smooth materials (the ones discussed in the previous chapter), and “-ance” for rough and contaminated surfaces. Most real surfaces fall into the latter category, discussed in the present chapter. Consequently, we will use the ending “-ance” for the definitions in the following section, and for most surface properties throughout this chapter (and the remainder of this book), unless the surface in question is optically smooth and the property is obtained from electromagnetic wave theory. Note that there will be occasions when either term could be used (“almost smooth” surfaces, comparing experimental data with electromagnetic wave theory, etc.).