Radiative Heat Transfer Modeling in Participating Media

Radiative heat transfer modelling in participating media addresses the propagation of thermal radiation through media that absorb, emit and scatter radiation. Such media include gas mixtures in combustion chambers, semitransparent solids, aerosols and biological tissues. The core of modelling lies in solving the radiative transfer equation, a high-dimensional integro-differential equation that accounts for spectral variation, directional dependence and boundary conditions. Approaches range from deterministic discrete ordinates and finite volume methods to stochastic Monte Carlo simulations, each offering trade-offs between accuracy and computational cost. Spectral absorption and scattering data underpin grey and non-grey models; grey models simplify the medium into a few averaged bands, while non-grey spectral models resolve fine radiative properties at many wavelengths. Weighted-sum-of-grey-gases and band-mapping techniques reduce computational burden in non-grey environments. Advances in line-by-line databases and high-performance computing now enable coupling of radiation with fluid dynamics and chemistry in reactive flows. This has broadened applications from industrial furnaces and rocket plumes to atmospheric radiation, solar receivers and thermal management in electronics. Accurate radiative modelling informs design optimisation, emission control and energy efficiency strategies, and supports climate modelling and remote sensing. Ongoing challenges include handling strongly scattering media, multiscale coupling with turbulence, and real-time implementation in complex geometries.

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Radiative Heat Transfer Modeling in Participating Media publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in radiative heat transfer modeling in participating media across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Radiative transfer equation (RTE): An integro-differential equation describing the change in radiative intensity along a path through an absorbing, emitting and scattering medium.

Participating media: A material through which radiation is absorbed, emitted or scattered, such as gases, aerosols or semitransparent solids.

Grey and non-grey models: Simplified approaches to spectral variation where grey models treat the medium as spectrally uniform and non-grey models resolve wavelength-dependent properties.

Weighted-sum-of-grey-gases model (WSGG): A non-grey spectral model that represents a gas mixture as a finite number of grey gases with assigned weights and absorption coefficients.

Discrete ordinates method (DOM): A deterministic numerical technique that discretises angular dependence of radiative intensity into a set of fixed directions for solving the RTE.

References

1. Pressure-dependent weighted-sum-of-gray-gases models for heterogeneous CO 2 - H 2 O mixtures at sub- and super-atmospheric pressure. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer (2021).
2. The Generalized SLW Model. Journal of Physics Conference Series (2016).
3. Weighted-sum-of-gray-gases models for non-gray thermal radiation of hydrocarbon fuel vapors, CH4, CO and soot. Fire Safety Journal (2021).
4. Turbulence radiation interaction in channel flow with various optical depths. Journal of Fluid Mechanics (2017).
5. Modeling Thermal Radiation in Combustion Environments: Progress and Challenges. Energies (2023).
6. Evaluation of spectral radiative properties of gases in high-pressure combustion. Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer (2022).