Evaluating View Factors Using a Hybrid Monte-Carlo Method

Peter Stewart Cumber*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This paper demonstrates that the well-known method for calculating view factors, the Monte Carlo method, combined with ray tracing is not necessarily the most efficient strategy. The Monte Carlo method and quasi-Monte Carlo method combined with numerical integration, provided the surfaces in a configuration are not too close together, are more accurate for the same run-time than a ray tracing-based Monte Carlo method. The Monte Carlo method based on numerical integration is complementary to the Monte Carlo method based on ray tracing. When many rays are required to calculate an accurate view factor, few function evaluations in a numerical integration approach are necessary to achieve the same accuracy. Where the surfaces in a configuration are touching, the Monte Carlo method with numerical integration converges to the exact view factor very slowly due to a singularity in the view factor multi-integral. For these configurations, a hybrid Monte Carlo method and quasi-Monte Carlo method are demonstrated to be the stochastic methods of choice.

Original languageEnglish
Article number122801
JournalJournal of Heat Transfer
Volume144
Issue number12
Early online date21 Sept 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2022

Keywords

  • Monte-Carlo method
  • numerical integration
  • quasi-Monte-Carlo method
  • ray tracing

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Materials Science
  • Condensed Matter Physics
  • Mechanics of Materials
  • Mechanical Engineering

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