Assembly of full-spectrum k-distributions from a narrow-band database; effects of mixing gases, gases and nongray absorbing particles, and mixtures with nongray scatterers in nongray enclosures

Full-spectrum k-distributions provide great accuracy combined with outstanding numerical efficiency for the evaluation of radiative transfer in absorbing-emitting molecular gases, but they do have several shortcomings: (1) It is difficult to assemble k-distributions for gas mixtures from precalculated full-spectrum k-distributions of individual gas species (i.e., without calculating the mixture k-distribution directly from the HITRAN/HITEMP database), (2) it is impossible to assemble k-distributions for a gas mixed with nongray absorbing particles (such as soot) from gas-only full-spectrum k-distributions, and (3) like all global models, full-spectrum k-distributions cannot accommodate nongray scattering behavior and/or nongray wall reflectances. In the present paper we show how these restrictions can be relaxed by (1) assembling full-spectrum k-distributions for a gas mixture from a narrow-band k-distribution database created for individual gas species, (2) by assembling gas and nongray absorbing particle mixture full-spectrum k-distributions from the same narrow-band database, and finally (3) by showing how a group of part-spectrum k-distributions can be generated from the same database to accommodate nongray scattering and nongray walls.