An Investigation of the Radiative Heat Transfer through Nonwoven Fibrous Materials

In this study, the surface-to-surface radiation model of the Fluent CFD code is used to investigate the response of a fibrous material to the radiative heat transfer. The unsteady state heat transfer equation is solved for the temperature and heat flux in and around the fibers that constitute a nonwoven fibrous material. For a fixed fiber diameter, it was shown that the higher the fabric's Solid Volume Fraction (SVF), the slower is the material's average temperature rise. Our simulation results also indicate that for a fixed SVF, fiber diameter has a negligible influence on the unsteady transfer of heat through the media. Of particular interest in this paper is the effect of material's thickness on the heat penetration. It is shown that the transient heat transfer exponentially decreases by increasing the material's thickness for fixed SVFs and fiber diameters. The above finding is also in agreement with our experimental study.