The Galerkin Method for Solving Radiation Transfer in Plane-Parallel Participating Media

Abstract

The Galerkin method is applied to solve radiative heat transfer in an isotropically scattering, absorbing, and emitting plane-parallel medium with diffusely reflecting boundaries. In this approach, the integral form of the equation of radiative transfer is transformed into a set of algebraic equations for the determination of the expansion coefficients associated with the representation of the incident radiation in a power series in the space variable. The method is easy and straightforward to apply and requires relatively little computer time for the computations, since explicit analytical expressions are obtainable for the expansion coefficients.