APPLICATION OF THE HYBRID ZONE MONTE-CARLO METHOD TO 3-D CURVILINEAR GRIDS IN RADIATIVE HEAT-TRANSFER

The zone method is applied to non-orthogonal curvilinear grids for the computation of radiative heat transfer. The interchange areas are cal culated by the Monte Carlo technique which has been fitted with a gene ralized ray tracing procedure. The method is applied to two complex th ree-dimensional (3-D) cases where inhomogeneities are present in the r adiation space (non-uniform gas properties and/or shadowing effects), and the gas is taken as gray. For comparison purposes, the same exampl es are worked out with the discrete transfer method. Very small discre pancies are found between the two methods for the surface heat fluxes, but the gas volumetric radiative sources are much more sensitive to i nhomogeneities in the gas phase, resulting in higher discrepancies for these terms. The method can be readily extended to incorporate real g ases and scattering effects.