General treatment of the interplay between fluid and radiative transport phenomena in symmetric plasmas: the sulphur lamp as a case study

A general ray-trace method for calculating the effects of radiative transfer in a control volume (CV) fluid code is presented. The method makes use of the structured CV grid of the fluid code, and is suited for geometries with a point or axis of symmetry. In particular, the specific equations for spherical and cylindrical (without z dependence) configurations are developed. The application of this method to local thermal equilibrium (LTE) and non-LTE plasma models is discussed. Various opportunities for sacrificing precision for calculation speed are pointed out. As a case study, the effects of radiative transfer in a sulphur lamp are calculated. Since an LTE description of the molecular radiation yields a computed spectrum that differs significantly from a measured one, the possibility of a non-LTE vibrational distribution of the radiating S2-B state is investigated. The results indicate that the vibrational populations may be inversed.