IntroductionThe use of ceramic materials for parts or coatings is of interest for high-temperature applications. Some of these materials have reinforcing fibers or are laminated so it is necessary to consider heat transfer in composite regions. The surrounding temperatures are high, which provides substantial radiative heating. Since some of the materials are semitransparent, their temperature distributions depend on the internal radiative heat flow. The refractive index of a semitransparent material can have a considerable effect on its temperature distribution. The refractive index governs the amount of transmission into the interior of the material and affects the internal reflections that occur. Of more significance, the emission within-a material depends on the square of its refractive index; hence internal emission can be many times that for a blackbody radiating into a vacuum. Since radiation exiting through an interface into ávactium cannot èxcéëd that of a blackbody, the amount of internal reflection can be substantial. It redistributes energy within the layer and tends to make the temperature distribution more uniform than for a material with refractive index close to one.To obtain the general solution for the temperature distribution in a composite semitransparent layer requires solving the integral equations of energy transfer in each region, including heat conduction, and matching temperatures and heat flows at the internal interface. A spectral calculation can be carried out in each significant wavelength band and the total energy flow found by summing over the bands. A numerical solution by computer is required. A simple limiting solution is obtained here that is helpful and informative. The purpose of this paper is to show that in the limit with no heat conduction and for gray layers with refractive indices greater than one, the solution for a composite region can be obtained from information that is already known and results calculated very easily. The effects of surface reflections and isotropic scattering are included. The solution of integral equations is not required. The limiting result can be helpful in initiating iterative computer solutions for a more general analysis and for checking the validity of numerical solutions.The development here builds on the analysis of Siegel and Spuckler (1992) where it was shown that for radiative equilib-