Radiant Heat Transfer From Isothermal Dispersions With Isotropic Scattering

Two approximate methods are presented for making radiant heat-transfer computations from gray, isothermal dispersions which absorb, emit, and scatter isotropically. The integrodifferential equation of radiant transfer is solved using moment techniques to obtain a first-order solution. A second-order solution is found by iteration. The approximate solutions are compared to exact solutions found in the literature of astrophysics for the case of a plane-parallel geometry. The exact and approximate solutions are both expressed in terms of directional and hemispherical emissivities at a boundary. The comparison for a slab, which is neither optically thin nor thick (τ = 1), indicates that the second-order solution is accurate to within 10 percent for both directional and hemispherical properties. These results suggest that relatively simple techniques may be used to make design computations for more complex geometries and boundary conditions.