Scaling anisotropic scattering in radiative transfer in three-dimensional nonhomogeneous media

Radiative heat transfer in three-dimensional nonhomogeneous participating medium was investigated by using REM2 method. The anisotropic scattering phase function was dealt with the scaling technique based on delta function approximation. The three-dimensional scaled isotropic results were compared with the published anisotropic scattering computations. A good agreement between the scaled isotropic approaches and the anisotropic solutions was found. The effects of scattering albedo, forward fraction of phase function, and wall emissivity were discussed. It was found that, with the increase of the scattering albedo, the radiative heat flux increases for forward scattering media, but decreases for backward scattering media. The radiative heat flux is increased with the increases of forward fraction of phase function and wall emissivity. The emissive power at the center of a cubical nonhomogeneous medium in radiative equilibrium with gray diffuse walls equals to the averaged blackbody emissive power of the six walls. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd.