Convection-radiation interaction in 3-D irregular enclosures using the least squares finite element method

Interaction phenomena between laminar forced convection and thermal radiation in complex 3-D geometries with gray participating medium are studied numerically. The solution scheme is based on the least-squares finite element method (LSFEM) which, to the knowledge of the authors, is applied at the first time to 3-D radiative heat transfer in participating media. Three test cases are examined and compared with other published works to verify this LSFEM method. Comparisons show that the LSFEM method is stable and has a good accuracy. Two cases of coupled convective and radiative heat transfer are simulated at different conduction-radiation parameters and Peclet numbers.