FINITE ELEMENT APPROXIMATION OF NONLOCAL HEAT RADIATION PROBLEMS

This paper focuses on finite element error analysis for problems involving both conductive and radiative heat transfers. The radiative heat exchange is modeled with a nonlinear and nonlocal term that also makes the problem non-monotone. The continuous problem has a maximum principle which suggests the use of inverse monotone discretizations. We also estimate the error due to the approximation of the boundary by showing continuous dependence on the geometric data for the continuous problem. The final result of this paper is a rigorous justification and error analysis for methods that use the so-called view factors for numerical modeling of the heat radiation.