Heat Transfer in Radiation Gasdynamics

Abstract

The importance of heat transfer by radiation in engineering problems has been noticed for a long time such as the heat transfer in an industrial furnace. It has been studied by Kirchhoff more than 100 years ago. In such earlier investigations, we consider the heat transfer by radiation alone without the interaction with heat conduction and convection. The essential feature of engineering radiative transfer problem different from those of astrophysics is the interreflection caused by the presence of walls. The problem may become very complicated due to the complex geometery of the system. It would be of interest to give a brief review of the general methods used in the analysis of engineering radiation problem which would be useful for our study of radiation gasdynamics. In section 2, we deal with the radiative heat transfer in a non-absorbing medium while in section 3, we deal with the radiative heat transfer in an absorbing medium. It should be noticed that these analyses are important in the determination of heat transfer of space vehicles because in the outer space the heat conduction and heat convection are negligible in comparison with radiation.