Parallel ray tracing for radiative heat transfer - Application in a distributed computing environment

Notes that, in a full-scale application of the Monte Carlo method for combi ned heat transfer analysis, problems usually arise from the large computing requirements. Here the method to overcome this difficulty is the parallel execution of the Monte Carlo method in a distributed computing environment. Addresses the problem of determination of the temperature field formed und er the assumption of radiative equilibrium in an enclosure idealizing an in dustrial furnace. The medium contained in this enclosure absorbs, emits and scatters anisotropically thermal radiation. Discusses two topics in detail : first, the efficiency of the parallelization of the developed code, and s econd, the influence of the scattering behavior of the medium. The adopted parallelization method for the first topic is the decomposition of the stat istical sample and its subsequent distribution among the available processo rs. The measured high efficiencies showed that this method is particularly suited to the target architecture of this study, which is a dedicated netwo rk of workstations supporting the message passing paradigm. For the second topic, the results showed that taking into account the isotropic scattering , as opposed to neglecting the scattering, has a pronounced impact on the t emperature distribution inside the enclosure. In contrast, the consideratio n of the sharply forward scattering, that is characteristic of all the real combustion particles, leaves the predicted temperature field almost undist inguishable from the absorbinglemitting case.