History of Radiation Heat Transfer Solution Procedure using Finite-Volume Method at the University of Minnesota

This presentation discusses the contributions of Professor Patankar to the developments of the finite-volume (FV) method to model radiation heat transfer (RHT) processes. Over the last two decades, the FV method has emerged as a popular approach to model radiative exchanges with and without participating media. The FV method for RHT was first presented by Raithby and co-workers in 1990 [Raithby and Chui, 1990]. It gained significant popularity as a solution procedure of choice for RHT processes after a series of publications by Patankar and co-workers starting from 1993 [Chai, Lee and Patankar, 1993, 1994a, b & c; Chai et al. 1994]. The FV method has since been refined, improved and extended to model a variety of complex physical situations and transient phenomena. Therefore, a comprehensive review of publications on this subject is not attempted here. Interested readers are referred to the comprehensive reviews of the Discrete-ordinates (DO) and FV methods by Guo and Hunter [2013] and Coelho [2014]. Consistent with one of the themes of this conference, this talk focuses on the history of the development of the FV method at the University of Minnesota from project proposal to NASA till the publications of his articles.