MODELING OF THE CONJUGATE RADIATION AND CONDUCTION PROBLEM IN A 3-D COMPLEX MULTI-BURNER FURNACE

Radiation is a major component of heat transfer in the modeling of furnaces. In this study, coupled radiative and conductive heat transfer problems are analyzed in complex geometries with inhomogeneous and anisotropic scattering participating media. A 3-D model is developed using combination of the discrete ordinates method and blocked-off-region procedure. The finite volume method has been adopted to solve the energy equation and the radiative source term in the energy equation is computed from intensities field. The accuracy of radiative conductive model is verified by comparison with benchmark solutions from the literature. As an example of engineering problems, radiative-conductive heat transfer in a furnace model with gray, inhomogeneous, and anisotropic scattering media is numerically studied. The distributions of temperature and heat flux in the furnace are analyzed for different thermoradiative parameters such as conduction-radiation parameter, scattering albedo, and anisotropic scattering coefficient. The numerical algorithm described is found to be fast and reliable for studying combined conductive and radiative heat transfer in 3-D irregular geometries.