Numerical Determination of Radiative View Factors

A peer-reviewed research paper presented at Chemeca 2010 in Adelaide, 2010. Chemeca is an annual conference established in 1970 to bring together chemical engineers and scientists from Australia and New Zealand to share insights and advanced centred around an annual theme. The theme of Chemeca 2010 was ‘Engineering at the Edge’.

Abstract

The accurate determination of view factors can be critically important in modelling any process where radiation is a major heat transfer mode. However while compilations for radiative view factors exist in the literature for a range of the simpler geometries, their determination for real-world problems can be challenging. This paper presents a Monte Carlo Ray Tracing (MCRT) framework for view factor determination; ray-tracing being a computational technique that is widely used in the graphics industry. One of the attractions of this method is that it employs a suite of ‘shape primitives’ that can be combined to create geometries of arbitrary complexity. Major challenges in the adoption of MCRT are its inherent computational demands and the lack of any a priori methodology for estimating a suitable ray density to achieve a given view factor accuracy. Thus this paper assesses a range of hardware and software options (all calculations being carried out using a Mac Pro system) for addressing these issues, including an assessment of a published ray density estimation methodology based on an exponential Chebyshev inequality. Results are presented for the application of these ray density bounds to the case of an operational furnace used to draw polymer optical fibres.

Links

• Numerical Determination of Radiative View Factors
• Chemeca