Due to the intensive coupling effect and non-linear characteristic, coupled conductive-radiative heat transfer problem in semitransparent media always consumes an enormous amount of computing time. In present work, an accelerative iteration model is developed to speed up the convergence process of this kind of coupled calculation. It promotes the iterative efficiency by revising the temperature and incident radiation of media during the iteration of energy equation and radiative transfer equation. It can remarkably reduce the computing time of coupled conductive-radiative heat transfer calculation in semitransparent media, even in the cases with complicate boundary conditions. The accuracy of present model is verified by comparing with literature and traditional source iteration method. The influences of conduction-radiation parameter, optical thickness, scattering albedo, emissivity of walls and boundary conditions are investigated as well. The results indicate that the accuracy of present model is reliable and its accelerative effect is more significant for the optically thick and scattering-dominated media with complicate boundary conditions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.