A Hybrid Wavenumber Selection Scheme for Line By Line Photon Monte Carlo Simulations in High Temperature Gases

Abstract

Recently, it has become possible to conduct linebyline (LBL) accurate radiative heat transfer calculations in spectrally highly nongray combustion systems using the Monte Carlo method. LBL accuracy, in principle, adds little to the computational load as compared to gray calculations. However, when employing the Monte Carlo method, the original scheme for choosing appropriate emission wavenumbers for statistical photon bundles is numerically expensive. An improved wavelength selection scheme has been applied to hypersonic plasmas for Monte Carlo solvers. However, directly applying this improved scheme to combustion gases may cause significant errors. In this paper, a hybrid scheme for wavenumber selection is proposed, significantly decreasing CPU requirements compared to previous work. The accuracy of the new method is established and its time requirements are compared against the previous method.