FINITE-ELEMENT MODELING OF RADIATION HEAT TRANSFER COUPLED WITH CONDUCTION IN AN ADAPTIVE METHOD

Abstract

This study deals with the finite-element modeling of radiation coupled with diffusion heat transfer. In many engineering problems, radiation occurs at the field boundary, where transfer is purely conductive. Traditional resolutions of such problems use the lumped radiosity method by delimiting the field into isothermal surfaces. This isothermal assumption implies the use of very refined meshes. An alternative simple method suppresses this isothermal restriction by integrating the Fredholm integral form directly. This method is slower but more accurate. In this work we present a hybrid method that uses both approaches, isothermal approximation and direct integration. This leads to a faster method that is easy to introduce into a finite-element code.