VECTOR AND PARALLEL MONTE CARLO RADIATIVE HEAT TRANSFER SIMULATION

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Abstract
A fully vectorized version of a Monte Carlo algorithm of radiative heat transfer in two-dimensional geometries is presented. This algorithm differs from previous applications in that its capabilities are more extensive, with arbitrary numbers of surfaces, arbitrary numbers of material properties, and surface characteristics that include transmission, specular reflection, and diffuse reflection (all of which may be functions of the angle of incidence). The algorithm is applied to an irregular, experimental geometry and implemented on a Cyber 205. A speedup factor of approximately 16, for this combination of geometry and material properties, is achieved for the vector version over the scalar code. Issues related to the details of vectorization, including heavy use of bit addressability, the maintaining of long vector lengths, and gather/scatter use, are discussed. The parallel application of this algorithm is straightforward and is discussed in light of architectural differences among several current supercomputers.