
ISSN Online: 2379-1748
ISBN Flash Drive: 978-1-56700-483-0
ISBN Online: 978-1-56700-482-3
4th Thermal and Fluids Engineering Conference
AN EFFICIENT MONTE CARLO-BASED SOLVER FOR THERMAL RADIATION IN PARTICIPATING MEDIA
Abstract
Monte Carlo-based solvers, while well-suited for accurate calculation of complex thermal radiation transport problems in participating media, are often deemed computationally unattractive for use in the solution of real-world problems. The main disadvantage of Monte Carlo (MC) solvers is their slow convergence rate and relatively high computational cost. This work presents a novel approach based on a low-discrepancy sequence (LDS) and is proposed for reducing the error bound of a Monte Carlo-based radiation solver. Sobols sequence – an LDS generated with a bit-by-bit exclusive-or operator – is used to develop a quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC)
solver for thermal radiation in this work. Preliminary results for simple radiation problems in participating
media show that the QMC-based solver has a lower error than the conventional MC-based solver. At the same time, QMC does not add any significant computational overhead. This essentially leads to a lower computational cost to achieve similar error levels from the QMC-based solver than the MC-based solver for thermal radiation.