An exact formulation of k-distribution methods in non-uniform gaseous media and its approximate treatment within the Multi-Spectral framework

The main restriction of k-distribution approaches for applications in radiative heat transfer in gaseous media arises from the use of a scaling or correlation assumption to treat non-uniform situations. It is shown that those cases can be handled exactly by using a multidimensional k-distribution that addresses the problem of spectral correlations without using any simplifying assumptions. Nevertheless, the approach cannot be suggested for engineering applications due to its computational cost. Accordingly, a more efficient method, based on the so-called Multi-Spectral Framework, is proposed to approximate the previous exact formulation. The model is assessed against reference LBL calculations and shown to outperform usual k-distribution approaches for radiative heat transfer in non-uniform media.