RÉSUMÉ

A radiative transfer model using a ray-tracing technique for arbitrary multidimensional geometries is presented in this article. It is a generalized method for calculation of radiation exchange in transparent or emitting, absorbing and isotropically scattering media with diffuse or specular walls. A unified formulation of thermal radiation models using transfer factors is presented. This formulation is based on the definition of 'generalized exchange factors' between surface or volume elements allowing the expression of all the radiative fluxes. The enclosure geometry is represented by a general data structure easily matched with any mesh tools. The ray-tracing procedure is then detailed for the calculation of generalized exchange factors for transparent enclosures as well as participating ones which have diffuse or specular boundaries. An efficient numerical method based on an iterative algorithm is proposed to evaluate transfer factors from the exchange factors without matrix operation. The interest of the model is investigated by a few sampling examples.