Multiscale Radiative Transfer in Cylindrical Coordinates

Abstract

The radiative transfer equations in cylindrical coordinates are important in the application of inertial confinement fusion. In comparison with the equations in Cartesian coordinates, an additional angular derivative term appears in the cylindrical case. This term adds great difficulty for a numerical scheme to keep the conservation of total energy. In this paper, based on weighting factors, the angular derivative term is properly discretized, and the interface fluxes in the radial r-direction depend on such a discretization as well. A unified gas kinetic scheme (UGKS) with asymptotic preserving property for the gray radiative transfer equations is constructed in cylindrical coordinates. The current UGKS can naturally capture the radiation diffusion solution in the optically thick regime with the cell size being much larger than photon’s mean free path. At the same time, the current UGKS can present accurate solutions in the optically thin regime as well. Moreover, it is a finite volume method with total energy conservation. Due to the scale-dependent time evolution solution for the interface flux evaluation, the scheme can cover multiscale transport mechanism seamlessly. The cylindrical hohlraum tests in inertial confinement fusion are used to validate the current approach, and the solutions are compared with implicit Monte Carlo result.