Radiative heat transfer for irregular geometries with the collapsed dimension method

A blocked-off region procedure is implemented with the collapsed dimension method (CDM) to deal with radiative transport problems in irregular geometries. Different test problems are validated for radiative and non-radiative equilibrium situations in participating or non-participating media. Results are found to be satisfactory for all straight edged, inclined and curved boundaries. The blocked-off region procedure based on Cartesian coordinate is found to be very convenient for a ray-tracing method like the CDM. The same ray tracing algorithm for a rectangular enclosure could be effectively used for any kind of 2-D geometries. This significantly reduces the effort of developing different ray-tracing algorithm for different geometries. In addition, it is an alternative than to write an algorithm in curvilinear coordinate for irregular geometries which found to be complicated for a ray-tracing method like the CDM. (C) 2005 Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.