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In zonal analysis of an enclosure containing a radiatively participating medium, the volume and bounding surface are divided into volume and area elements which are assumed to be isothermal. For a system of M elements consisting of N surfaces and Γ volume elements (M = N + Γ), M2 relationships (direct- or total-exchange areas of conventional zonal analysis) define all possible radiant interchange between element pairs. Due to reciprocity there are at most M(M + 1)/2 unique direct-exchange areas. The use of symmetry may greatly reduce the number of unique exchange areas. In the alternative form presented, exchange factors are defined such that a gray medium’s gas-to-gas exchange factors describe only the redistribution of radiative source terms. Only surface-to-surface and surface-to-gas (gas-to-surface) relationships are required to wholly define the system in radiative equilibrium. That is, a system in radiative equilibrium may be characterized by as many as Γ(Γ + 1)/2 fewer factors. These same exchange factors may be augmented by gas-to-gas exchange factors to analyze media not in radiative equilibrium. In an isotropically scattering, gray medium, exchange factors are functions of system geometry and total extinction only. The degree of extinction due to scattering does not affect exchange factors. Transformations between direct-exchange areas and exchange factors are developed.

A particular inverse design problem is proposed as a benchmark for comparison of five solution techniques used in design of enclosures with radiating sources. The enclosure is three-dimensional and includes some surfaces that are diffuse and others that are specular diffuse. Two aspect ratios are treated. The problem is completely described, and solutions are presented as obtained by the Tikhonov method, truncated singular value decomposition, conjugate gradient regularization, quasi-Newton minimization, and simulated annealing. All of the solutions use a common set of exchange factors computed by Monte Carlo, and smoothed by a constrained maximum likelihood estimation technique that imposes conservation, reciprocity, and non-negativity. Solutions obtained by the various methods are presented and compared, and the relative advantages and disadvantages of these methods are summarized.

A series of tests involving detonation of high explosive blanketed by aqueous foam (conducted from 1982 to 1984) are described in primarily terms of recorded peak pressure, positive phase specific impulse, and time of arrival. The investigation showed that optimal blast mitigation occurs for foams with an expansion ratio of about 60:1. Simple analyses representing the foam as a shocked single phase mixture are presented and shown inadequate. The experimental data demonstrate that foam slows down and broadens the propagated pressure disturbance relative to a shock in air. Shaped charges and flyer plates were evaluated for operation in foam and appreciable degradation was observed for the flyer plates due to drag created by the foam.4

The design of radiant enclosures is an active area of research in radiation heat transfer. When design variables are discrete such as for radiant heater arrays with on-off control of individual heaters, current methods of design optimization fail. This paper reports the development of a metaheuristic thermal radiation optimization approach. Two metaheuristic optimization methods are explored: simulated annealing and tabu search. Both approaches are applied to a combinatorial radiant enclosure design problem. Configuration factors are used to develop a dynamic neighborhood for the tabu search algorithm. Results are presented from the combinatorial optimization problem. Tabu search with a problem specific dynamic neighborhood definition is shown to find better solutions than the benchmark simulated annealing approach in less computation time.