Methods to Accelerate Ray Tracing in the Monte Carlo Method for Surface-to-Surface Radiation Transport

Two different algorithms to accelerate ray tracing in surface-to-surface radiation Monte Carlo calculations are investigated. The first algorithm is the well-known binary spatial partitioning (BSP) algorithm, which recursively bisects the computational domain into a set of hierarchically linked boxes that are then made use of to narrow down the number of ray-surface intersection calculations. The second algorithm is the volume-by-volume advancement (VVA) algorithm. This algorithm is new and employs the volumetric mesh to advance the ray through the computational domain until a legitimate intersection point is found. The algorithms are tested for two classical problems, namely an open box, and a box in a box, in both two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) geometries with various mesh sizes. Both algorithms are found to result in orders of magnitude gains in computational efficiency over direct calculations that do not employ any acceleration strategy. For three-dimensional geometries, the VVA algorithm is found to be clearly superior to BSP, particularly for cases with obstructions within the computational domain. For two-dimensional geometries, the VVA algorithm is found to be superior to the BSP algorithm only when obstructions are present and are densely packed.