Numerical modeling of radiative heat transfer in water sprays

A numerical method is developed for the transport of polychromatic radiation in polydisperse sprays. The method is implemented within a wide-band radiation solver using the Finite Volume Method. Mie theory is used to compute the absorption and scattering characteristics of the water droplets. The solver is designed to be computationally effective because the simulations of fire scenarios are inherently time-dependent and the radiative transport equation must be solved many times. The model is compared with two sets of experimental data, and a discussion of the results is presented.