Hybrid SN-PN Solution of the Radiative Transfer Equation in Multi-Dimensional Media

Abstract

The Modified Differential Approximation (MDA) was originally proposed for solution of the radiative transfer equation (RTE) in order to remove the shortcomings of the P1 approximation in scenarios where the radiation intensity is strongly directionally dependent. In the original MDA approach, the wall-emitted component of the intensity is determined using a surface-to-surface exchange formulation that makes use of geometric viewfactors. Such an approach is computationally very expensive for complex geometry and/or inhomogeneous media. This article presents a new formulation in which the wall-emitted component is solved using the Discrete Ordinates Method (SN approximation), while the medium-emitted component is solved using the P1 approximation, resulting in a hybrid SN-PN RTE solver. Results show that the hybrid Discrete Ordinates-P1 method (DOM-P1) is computationally very efficient, but its accuracy is poor in optically thin situations where ray effects, inherent in the Discrete Ordinates Method, are pronounced. To circumvent this problem, the control-angle Discrete Ordinates Method (CADOM) is finally employed, and the accuracy of the hybrid CADOM-P1 method is found to be far superior to the hybrid DOM-P1 method.