Radiation is the mode of energy transfer that occurs through electromagnetic waves and is important in many applications, including solar loading in HVAC, automotive headlamps, and glass furnaces. In this lesson, we will understand how to model radiation heat transfer using Ansys Fluent.
We will start with a discussion on how the phenomenon of radiation differs from conduction and convection, and we will learn about the concept of thermal radiation as a subset of the electromagnetic spectrum. We will learn how to determine whether a radiation model should be included in a heat transfer model by comparing the radiative heat flux with the conduction and convection heat flux. We will also learn how to activate a radiation model in Ansys Fluent and understand the factors to consider when selecting a model, such as optical thickness. We will discuss the accuracy of different radiation models, including the discrete ordinates (DO) model and the Monte Carlo model. Lastly, we will talk about how radiation heat transfer rate differs from total heat transfer rate, and we will also learn the significance of these values in heat transfer simulations
Ansys Student can be downloaded for free here.