An assessment of real-gas modelling in 2D enclosures

In order to model efficiently the radiative transfer in a real-participating gas, various methods have been developed during the last few decades. Each method has its own formulation and leads to different accuracies and computation times. Most of the studies reported in the literature concern specific real-gas models, and very few are devoted to an extended comparison of these models. The present study is a 2D assessment of the main real-gas methods: the cumulative-k method (CK), the statistical narrow-band model (SNB), the hybrid SNB-CK method, the grey-band method (GB), the weighted sum of grey gases method (WSGG), the spectral line-based weighted sum of grey gases method (SLW) and the exponential wide band model (EWB). Five cases have been considered: two homogeneous and isothermal cases with a single participating gas (CO2 and H2O), two non-homogeneous and non-isothermal cases with a single participating gas (CO2 and H2O), and one homogeneous and non-isothermal case with a mixture of CO2 and H2O. Although the SNB and SNB-CK methods are the most accurate methods, the SLW method seems actually the best deal between accuracy and computation time. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.