Numerical Analysis of Radiation Heat Transfer Using the Lattice Boltzmann Method and the Finite Volume Method

Abstract

This article reports the result of two popular numerical methods, viz., finite volume method (FVM) and lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) used to calculate the radiation heat transfer within an enclosure. 2-D rectangular enclosure with absorbing, emitting and scattering participating medium is considered. In terms of collision and streaming, the present approach of LBM for the radiative heat transfer is similar to those being used in fluid dynamics and heat transfer for the analysis of conduction and convection. However, in the present LBM approach in order to mitigate the effect of isotropy in the polar direction the number of lattices employed is greater than those being used for 2-D system. Distribution of heat flux and emissive power for different values of extinction coefficient has been obtained using both methods. The good agreement has been found between LBM and FVM results. The number of iteration and CPU times has also been compared. It is found that for the convergence of solution the LBM required a greater number of iterations as FVM but LBM computationally much faster than FVM.