Geometric optimization of radiative heat transfer on surfaces of corrugated furnaces

•Numerical optimization of radiative heat transfer on corrugated surfaces.•Geometric optimization of radiative heat transfer on combustion chamber.•Assessment of different optimization methodology applied to radiative heat transfer.

Corrugated furnace technology is used in fire tube steam generators to improve mechanical strength and heat transfer in the furnace. In this paper, geometric optimization of radiative heat transfer of corrugated furnaces using finite volume method with two optimization methods (the method of simulated annealing and the simplex method) is proposed. The methodologies were applied to two benchmark cases: one is a theoretical furnace with a constant temperature profile, gray gas and black cold walls and the other is a combustion chamber with non-gray gas of a given temperature profile and constant temperature gray furnace surfaces. For the first case study, the optimization results indicate that when the gray gas absorption coefficient increases, the corrugation amplitude also increases. However, it has no influence on the number of corrugation points. In the second case study, the problem is ill-posed, thus requiring the non-deterministic characteristic of the simulated annealing method to obtain the optimum condition. In terms of optimization methods, the simulated annealing method obtained better optimization results, especially in the furnace with combustion, at the expense of a greater number of determinations of the objective function.