Nodal synthetic kernel (N-SKN) method for solving radiative heat transfer problems in one- and two-dimensional participating medium with isotropic scattering

•A nodal method is proposed to radiative integral transfer equation.•The source terms are approximated by the Synthetic Kernel method.•Double P1 is employed to describe the angular distribution with isotropic transverse leakage assumption.•Four benchmark problems of homogeneous are set up and compared with the exact and DOM S8 solutions.

In this study, a nodal method based on the synthetic kernel (SKN) approximation is developed for solving the radiative transfer equation (RTE) in one- and two-dimensional cartesian geometries. The RTE for a two-dimensional node is transformed to one-dimensional RTE, based on face-averaged radiation intensity. At the node interfaces, double P1 expansion is employed to the surface angular intensities with the isotropic transverse leakage assumption. The one-dimensional radiative integral transfer equation (RITE) is obtained in terms of the node-face-averaged incoming/outgoing incident energy and partial heat fluxes. The synthetic kernel approximation is employed to the transfer kernels and nodal-face contributions. The resulting SKN equations are solved analytically. One-dimensional interface-coupling nodal SK1 and SK2 equations (incoming/outgoing incident energy and net partial heat flux) are derived for the small nodal-mesh limit. These equations have simple algebraic and recursive forms which impose burden on neither the memory nor the computational time. The method was applied to one- and two-dimensional benchmark problems including hot/cold medium with transparent/emitting walls. The 2D results are free of ray effect and the results, for geometries of a few mean-free-paths or more, are in excellent agreement with the exact solutions.