Coupled radiative-conductive heat transfer problems in complex geometries using embedded boundary method

Abstract

This study is aimed to analyze combined radiative and conductive heat transfer in two-dimensional irregular geometries using the embedded boundary treatment in Cartesian coordinate system. The main advantage of Cartesian formulation is to simplify grid generation and using efficient Cartesian solvers for problems with complex geometries. The discrete ordinates method is used for angular discretization of radiative transfer equation (RTE) in a participating medium and the finite volume method is used for spatial discretization of RTE and the energy equation. First, the required equations to implement the embedded boundary method in combined conductive-radiative problems are developed. Then, this method is employed to solve several coupled conductive-radiative problems associated with the complex geometry. To assess the accuracy and investigate various characteristics of the embedded boundary method, the results are compared with the other methods for analyzing of irregular geometries, i.e. the blocked-off method and the body-fitted treatment. The results showed that the embedded boundary method is an efficient approach for investigation heat transfer problems of combined conduction-radiation in complex enclosures including inclined or curved boundaries using Cartesian grid system. Especially for calculations near the complex boundaries, this method has high priority over the blocked-off method.