Estimation of emissivities in a two-dimensional irregular geometry by inverse radiation analysis using hybrid genetic algorithm

An inverse radiation analysis is presented for estimating the wall emissivities for an absorbing, emitting, scattering media in a two-dimensional irregular geometry with diffusely emitting and reflecting opaque boundaries from the measured temperatures. The finite-volume method was employed to solve the radiative transfer equation for 2D irregular geometry. The hybrid genetic algorithm which contains local optimization algorithm was adopted to estimate wall emissivities by minimizing an objective function, while reducing computation time. It was found that an increase in the standard deviation in measurements significantly deteriorated the estimation of wall emissivities. Thus, a very accurate measurement was required in inverse radiation for better estimation of wall emissivities, especially, in a high temperature environment. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.