Conductive-radiative heat transfer in grey materials

Abstract

We study the well-posedness of a class of models describing heat transfer by conduction and radiation. For that purpose we propose an abstract mathematical framework that allows us to prove existence, uniqueness and the comparison principle for the weak solution with minimal or almost minimal a priori assumptions for the data. The theory covers different types of grey materials, that is, both semitransparent and opaque bodies as well as isotropic or nonisotropic scattering/reflection provided that the material properties do not depend on the wavelength of the radiation. To demonstrate the use of the abstract theory we consider in detail two examples, heat transfer between opaque bodies with diffuse-grey surfaces and a model with semitransparent material and specularly reflecting surfaces.