Transient coupled heat transfer in multilayer composite with one specular boundary coated

By the ray tracing\node method, the transient coupled radiative and conductive heat transfer in absorbing, scattering multilayer composite is investigated with one surface of the composite being opaque and specular, and the others being semitransparent and specular. The effect of Fresnel’s reflective law and Snell’s refractive law on coupled heat transfer are analyzed. By using ray tracing method in combination with Hottel and Sarofim’s zonal method and spectral band model, the radiative intensity transfer model have been put forward. The difficulty for integration to solve radiative transfer coefficients (RTCs) is overcame by arranging critical angles according to their magnitudes. The RTCs are used to calculated radiative heat source term, and the transient energy equation is discretized by control volume method. The study shows that, for intensive scattering medium, if the refractive indexes are arranged decreasingly from the inner part of the composite to both side directions respectively, then, the total reflection phenomenon in the composite is advantageous for the scattered energy to be absorbed by the layer with the biggest refractive index, so at transient beginning a maximum temperature peak may appear in the layer with the biggest refractive index.