In this work, a steady discrete unified gas kinetic scheme (SDUGKS) is
proposed to solve the steady radiative transfer equation (RTE), which is an
improvement of the original SDUGKS [X. F. Zhou et al., J. Comput. Phys. 423,
109767 (2020)]. The trapezoidal rule other than the rectangular rule used in
the original SDUGKS is adopted in the proposed method in the reconstruction of
energy flux across cell interface, just as the unsteady DUGKS. By this way, the
characteristic line length of the modified SDUGKS establishes a relationship
with the Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) number in the DUGKS, which guarantees
the accuracy of the modified SDUGKS. Furthermore, the characteristic line
length is no longer limited by the extinction coefficient like in original
SDUGKS. As a result, the modified SDUGKS is more accurate and robust than
original SDUGKS, and more efficient than the DUGKS for steady radiation
problems. Furthermore, the smooth linear interpolation and the van Leer limiter
are used for problems with smooth and discontinuous optical thicknesses,
respectively. Several numerical tests with optical thickness varying from
optical thin to thick are conducted to validate the present scheme. Numerical
results demonstrate that the modified SDUGKS can serve as an effective tool in
the study of multiscale steady radiative heat transfer in participating media.Comment: 23pages,16 figures,2 table