Comparison of Quadrature Schemes in DOM for Anisotropic Scattering Radiative Transfer Analysis

Abstract

The commonly implemented level-symmetric S _N quadrature set for the discrete-ordinates method suffers from a limitation in discrete direction number to avoid physically unrealistic weighting factors. This limitation can have an adverse impact for determining radiative transfer, as directional discretization results in angular false scattering errors due to distortion of the scattering phase function in addition to the ray effect. To combat this limitation, several higher-order quadrature schemes with no directional limitation have been developed. Here, four higher-order quadrature sets (Legendre-equal weight, Legendre-Chebyshev, triangle tessellation, and spherical ring approximation) are implemented for determination of radiative transfer in a 3-D cubic enclosure containing participating media. Heat fluxes obtained at low direction number are compared to the S _N quadrature and Monte Carlo predictions to gauge and compare quadrature accuracy. Investigation into the reduction/elimination of angular false scattering with increase in direction number, including heat flux accuracy with respect to Monte Carlo and computational efficiency, is presented. It is found that while the higher-order quadrature sets are able to effectively minimize angular false scattering, the number of directions required is extremely large, and thus it is more computationally efficient to implement proper phase-function normalization to obtain accurate results.