Combined radiative and convective heat transfer in a three-dimensional rectangular channel at different wall temperatures

Abstract This paper deals with a numerical study of combined convective and radiative heat transfer in a three-dimensional rectangular duct with hydrodynamically and thermally developing laminar flow. The gas is assumed to be an incompressible, absorbing, emitting, isotropically scattering, gray medium. Isothermal, gray, diffuse boundary walls at different temperatures are assumed. The finite-volume method (FVM) is adopted to describe both convective and radiative heat transfer. The coupled continuity and momentum equations are solved by means of SIMPLER algorithm. Numerical results for the radiative flux show very good agreement with the available data. The effects of aspect ratio, optical thickness, scattering albedo and wall emissivity on the mean bulk temperature are also investigated. By splitting the heat flux into convective and radiative contributions, the relative importance of these components is assessed for a typical range of values of the parameters.