Unstructured Control-Volume Finite-Element Method for Radiative Heat Transfer in a Complex 2-D Geometry

Abstract

This article describes a new approach based on the control-volume finite-element method (CVFEM) for computing radiative heat transfer in a complex two-dimensional geometry using a general unstructured grid. To examine its accuracy and computational efficiency, five test cases are investigated, and the results obtained agree very well with other published works. In addition, the study presented in this article shows that not only this method is flexible in treating radiative heat transfer in complex geometry, but also that the computer procedure based on this numerical method needs an accurate computer process unit (CPU) time and can be combined easily with developed codes for fluid dynamics.