An Acceleration Technique for the Computation of Participating Radiative Heat Transfer

It is known that the finite volume and discrete ordinates methods for computing participating radiation are slow to converge when the optical thickness of the medium becomes large. This is a result of the sequential solution procedure usually employed to solve the directional intensities, which couples the ordinate directions and the energy equation loosely. Previously published acceleration techniques have sought to employ a governing equation for the angular-average of the radiation intensity to promote inter-directional coupling. These techniques have not always been successful, and even where successful, have been found to destroy the conservation properties of the radiative transfer equation. In this paper, we develop an algorithm called Multigrid Acceleration using Global Intensity Correction (MAGIC) which employs a multigrid solution of the average intensity and energy equations to significantly accelerate convergence, while ensuring that the conservative property of the radiative transfer equation is preserved. The method is shown to perform well for radiation heat transfer problems in absorbing, emitting and scattering media, both and without radiative equilibrium, and across a range of optical thicknesses.