Numerical Investigation of the Transient Radiative Heat Transfer inside a Hexagonal Furnace Filled with Particulate Medium

Abstract

The transient radiative heat transfer in two 2D irregular geometry filled with particulate media is numerically investigated. The radiative transfer equation is solved with FTn finite volume method. Non-orthogonal mesh is used to discretize the computational domain and the high resolution CLAM scheme is utilized to relate the facial intensities to the nodal values. Various cases of scattering in media with real indices of refraction (dielectric particles) and complex indices of refraction (absorbing particles) are considered. Both Mie theory and equivalent isotropic approximation are used to account for the scattering behavior of the media. The difference between these two methods is found insignificant, especially for the steady state solutions and for media with complex indices of refraction, while the complexity and computational cost of the equivalent isotropic approximation is much lower than those of Mie theory.