Prediction of radiative heat transfer using multi-flux method in space application

Abstract

Interaction between fluid flow and thermal radiation has received considerable attention due to its numerous applications in engineering field including space applications. To analyse the radiation heat transfer in a radiating fluid, the simultaneous solution of the radiation transfer equation (RTE) and the fluid dynamics equations is required. This means that the numerical procedure used for the RTE must be computationally efficient to permit its inclusion in the other submodels, and must be compatible with the other transport equations. In this context the finite volume method (FVM) and the discrete ordinates method (DOM) are usually being incorporated to simulate radiation problems with curvilinear coordinates. In this paper these two representative methods are examined and compared, especially in terms of the directional dependence of radiation intensity due to the discrete division of a solid angle. The FVM shows more reasonable results than the DOM does, as it has less constraint on the angular discretisation.