Radiative Heat Transfer in Multidimensional Emitting, Absorbing, and Anisotropic Scattering Media—Mathematical Formulation and Numerical Method

Thermal radiative transmission in multidimensional emitting, absorbing, and anisotropic scattering media is studied in this paper. In the first part, starting from basic formulae of radiative heat transfer, a set of integral equations for the problem is derived. Then the product-integration method is applied to discretize the integral equations. This method, while analogous to Hottel’s zonal method or Razzaque’s finite element method, requires evaluation of only three or two-dimensional integrals for three-dimensional systems. Finally the formulation and the numerical technique are applied to the problems of thermal radiation in emitting, absorbing, and linearly anisotropic scattering planar and square media with gray surfaces and with or without internal heat generations. Computed results are discussed and compared with available data.