INVERSE GEOMETRY DESIGN OF RADIATIVE ENCLOSURES USING THE GENETIC ALGORITHM

An implementation of the genetic algorithm to geometry design of two-dimensional radiant enclosures is described. The primary objective of the work is to find the optimal shape of a radiant enclosure to create a desired heat flux distribution over the temperature specified design surface. The radiative transfer equation in the radiant enclosure with diffuse-gray walls and containing a transparent medium is solved by the discrete transfer method. The enclosure design problem is reduced to an optimization problem for finding the positions of control points which represent the B-spline curves. The optimization problem is solved by the micro genetic algorithm which allows for a very small population size. The influence of mesh refinement and shape parameters on the rate of convergence and the optimal shape of the enclosure are investigated by using some numerical experiments