Description:
The problem of convective instability of a radiating fluid layer with scattering is treated with an extension of the Eddington aproximation that allows the inclusion of anisotropic scattering into the solution of the radiative transfer equation. Introduction of scattering by keeping the optical depth of absorption constant reduces the critical Rayleigh number as well as the wavenumber, and thus, reduces the stabilizing influence of thermal radiation. It is shown that in cases of a narrow radiative boundary layer with a large temperature gradient, higher-order expansion terms are sometimes necessary to approximate the solution properly. In certain cases a two layer convection mode with a large critical wavenumber up to 50 sets in the first layer has two cells developing in and near the two radiative boundary layers.