Analytical Monte Carlo Ray Tracing simulation of radiative heat transfer through bimodal fibrous insulations with translucent fibers

In this study, a Monte Carlo Ray Tracing (MCRT) simulation technique is developed to study steady-state radiative heat transfer through fibrous insulation materials. The simulations are conducted in 3-D disordered virtual fibrous media with unimodal and/or bimodal fiber diameter distributions consisting of fibers whose surfaces are specularly reflective, and are translucent to Infrared (IR) radiation. Scattering within the realm of geometric optics is incorporated into our MCRT simulations using Snell's Law for ray refraction. Fibers' optical properties are obtained from Fresnel's law and Beer's law based on the refractive index of the material. Two different treatments of "high" and "low" conductivities are considered for the fibers and their effects are discussed. Our results indicate that heat flux through a fibrous medium with translucent fibers decreases with increasing packing fraction of the fibers. It was observed that IR transmittance through the media increases with increasing through-plane orientation of the fibers, but is independent of their in-plane orientations. It was also found that fiber orientation has generally a negligible effect on the temperature profile across the media's thickness. However, for the case of high-conductivity fibers, increasing fibers' through-plane orientation tends to flatten the temperature profile. The results obtained from simulating bimodal fibrous structures indicate that increasing the fiber-diameter dissimilarity, or the mass fraction of the coarse fibers, slightly increases the radiation transmittance through the media, and accordingly reduces the temperature gradient across the thickness. Our simulation results are compared with those from the two-flux model and good agreement is observed. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.