Where do I enter radiation properties such as emissivity/absorptivity, are there any recommended values for certain surfaces, and where do I find them?
The emissivity of a material is the most representative radiative property and it has to be entered in the boundary condition panel for a proper solution of the radiative equations.
At inlets and outlets the default emissivity/absorptivity is 1 (all the radiation exiting the domain does not return). From experiments, the non-metals have an emissivity between 0.8 and 1 for most polar angles. The emissivity of metals is between 0.04 and 0.06 increasing rapidly for polar angles larger than 50 degrees with the normal. The user has to distinguish between the internal and external emissivity.
The internal emissivity is used to compute the radiative exchange inside the computational domain whereas external emissivity refers to radiation exchange with the exterior.
Ideally, electromagnetic wave theory can be used to predict all radiative properties. But this theory neglects the effects of surface conditions/finish. Consequently most of the data available today is from experiments in the 1950s and 1960s. Any heat transfer/radiation textbook has a number of references on such properties. Ansys does not provide emissivity values for most material.