Galerkin method in radiative transfer

An assesment is made of the Galerkin technique as a method of solution of t he radiative transfer equation in absorbing, emitting and scattering media in terms of two specific applications: one between two parallel boundaries separated by a finite distance and the other between two concentric spheres . In both cases the bounding surfaces are maintained at different, but unif orm temperatures and are considered to be opaque, gray and diffusely emitti ng and diffusely reflecting with uniform emissivity over each surface. By t he implementation of the Galerkin technique, formal relations are developed for the computation of the radiative heat flux in both applications. In th e second case, results are compared with the 'exact' numerical results avai lable in the literature. It is demonstrated that the method is relatively s imple to use and yields highly accurate results. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.