Prediction of radiative heat transfer between two concentric spherical enclosures with the finite volume method

The radiative heat transfer between two concentric spheres separated by an absorbing, emitting, and isotropically scattering gray medium is investigated by using the finite volume method (FVM). Especially, a mapping that simplifies the solution of spherically symmetric radiative heat transfer problems is introduced, thereby, the intensity depending on spatial one-dimension and angular one-dimension is transformed into spatial two-dimensional one. By adopting this mapping process, angular redistribution, which appears in such curvilinear coordinates as cylindrical or spherical ones, is treated efficiently without any artifice usually introduced in the conventional discrete ordinates method (DOM). After a mathematical formulation and corresponding discretization equation for the radiative transfer equation (RTE) are derived, final discretization equation is introduced by using the directional weight, which is the key parameter in the FVM since it represents the inflow or outflow of radiant energy across the control volume faces depending on its sign. The present approach is then validated by comparing the present results with those of previous works by changing such various parameters as temperature ratio between inner and outer spherical enclosure, wall emissivity, and optical thickness of the participating medium. All the results presented in this work show that the present method is accurate and valuable for the analysis of spherically symmetric radiative heat transfer problems between two concentric spheres.