Parallelization of the finite volume method for radiation heat transfer

Abstract

The finite volume method for radiative heat transfer calculations has been parallelized using two strategies, the angular domain decomposition and the spatial domain decomposition. In the first case each processor performs the calculations for the whole domain and for a subset of control angles, while in the second case each processor deals with all the control angles but only treats a spatial subdomain. The method is applied to three‐dimensional rectangular enclosures containing a grey emitting‐absorbing medium. The results obtained show that the number of iterations required to achieve convergence is independent of the number of processors in the angular decomposition strategy, but increases with the number of processors in the domain decomposition method. As a consequence, higher parallel efficiencies are obtained in the first case. The influence of the angular discretization, grid size and absorption coefficient of the medium on the parallel performance is also investigated.

Citation

Coelho, P.J. and Gonçalves, J. (1999), "Parallelization of the finite volume method for radiation heat transfer", International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow, Vol. 9 No. 4, pp. 388-406. https://doi.org/10.1108/09615539910266576