Abstract
The numerical solution of the heat equation is a particularly challenging subject in complex, practical applications such as functionally graded materials for which analytical solution is not available or hardly attainable. The Monte Carlo method is a powerful technique with some advantages compared to the conventional methods and is often used when all else fail. In this paper, we introduce the Finite Volume Monte Carlo (FVMC) method for solving 3D steady-state heat equation where, instead of using the usual finite difference scheme for discretization of the heat equation, the finite volume scheme is used. The FVMC method is tested for three problems to assess the robustness of the method, first one in a simple geometry for validation and evaluation of the predictive performance, the second one in a complex geometry with unstructured mesh and the last one in a problem with a variable heat source and different kinds of boundary conditions. Comparisons were made to the analytical solution in the first test case, whereas for the remaining test cases, the CFD methods were utilized in the absence of the analytical solutions. It was observed that the FVMC temperature distribution agrees perfectly with analytical and CFD solutions in all problems. Despite expecting computational accuracy to improve by increasing total number of particles in the FVMC method, a very good accuracy was obtained for all considered problems after a small number of walks, and the calculated relative root-mean-square errors were below 1%.
Similar content being viewed by others
Abbreviations
- \(A\) :
-
Cross-sectional area (m2)
- \(C\) :
-
Nondimensional temperature coefficient
- \(a\), \(b\) and \(c\) :
-
Length, width and height of the box (m)
- \(\dot{E}\) :
-
Energy (W)
- FVMC:
-
Finite Volume Monte Carlo
- \(g\) :
-
Volumetric rate of internal energy generation (W/m3)
- \(\bar{g}\) :
-
Average value of the volumetric rate of internal energy generation (W/m3)
- \(g_{0}\) :
-
Heat generation coefficient (W/m3)
- \(k\) :
-
Thermal conductivity (W/m K)
- \(m_{i}\) :
-
Total number of steps for each particle before reaching the boundary
- \(N\) :
-
Total number of particles
- \(q\) :
-
Heat flow rate (W)
- \(R\) :
-
Random number
- \(S_{ }\) :
-
Source term (W)
- \(T\) :
-
Temperature (K)
- \(V\) :
-
Volume (m3)
- \(x, y, z\) :
-
Cartesian coordinates (m)
- \(\beta\), \(\gamma\), \(\eta\) :
-
Eigen values of the heat equation
References
Noda N (1999) Thermal stresses in functionally graded materials. J Therm Stresses 22(4–5):477–512
Gallegos-Muñoz A, Violante-Cruz C, Balderas B, Rangel-Hernandez V, Belman-Flores J (2010) Analysis of the conjugate heat transfer in a multi-layer wall including an air layer. Appl Therm Eng 30:599–604
Norouzi M, Rahman H, Birjandi A, Jone A (2016) A general exact analytical solution for anisotropic non-axisymmetric heat conduction in composite cylindrical shells. Int J Heat Mass Transf 93:41–56
Howell J (1998) The Monte Carlo method in radiative heat transfer. J Heat Transf Trans ASME 120:547–560
Naeimi H, Kowsary F (2017) An optimized and accurate Monte Carlo method to simulate 3D complex radiative enclosures. Int Commun Heat Mass Trans 84:150–157
Naeimi H, Kowsary F (2017) Macro-voxel algorithm for adaptive grid generation to accelerate grid traversal in the radiative heat transfer analysis via Monte Carlo method. Int Commun Heat Mass Trans 87:22–29
Sadiku MNO (2009) Monte Carlo methods for electromagnetics. CRC Press, Boca Raton
Haji-Sheikh A, Sparrow E (1967) The solution of heat conduction problems by probability methods. J Heat Transf Trans ASME 89:121–130
Kowsary F, Arabi M (1999) Monte Carlo solution of anisotropic heat conduction. Int Commun Heat Mass Transf 26(8):1163–1173
Kowsary F, Irano S (2006) Monte Carlo solution of transient heat conduction in anisotropic media. J Thermophys Heat Transf 20(2):342–345
Grigoriu M (2000) A Monte Carlo solution of heat conduction and Poisson equations. J Heat Transf Trans ASME 122:40–45
Wong B, Francoeur M, Pinar Mengüç M (2011) A Monte Carlo simulation for phonon transport within silicon structures at nanoscales with heat generation. Int J Heat Mass Transf 54:1825–1838
Bahadori R, Gutierrez H, Manikonda Sh, Meinke R (2018) A mesh-free Monte-Carlo method for simulation of three-dimensional transient heat conduction in a composite layered material with temperature dependent thermal properties. Int J Heat Mass Transf 119:533–541
Hua Y-C, Cao B-Y (2017) An efficient two-step Monte Carlo method for heat conduction in nanostructures. J Comput Phys 342:253–266
Talebi S, Gharehbash K, Jalali HR (2017) Study on random walk and its application to solution of heat conduction equation by Monte Carlo method. Prog Nucl Energy 96:18–35
Hua Y-C, Zhao T, Gua Z-Y (2017) Transient thermal conduction optimization for solid sensible heat thermal energy storage modules by the Monte Carlo method. Energy 133(C):338–347
Haji-Sheikh A, Buckingham F (1993) Multidimensional inverse heat conduction using the Monte Carlo method. J Heat Transf Trans ASME 115:26–33
Woodbury K, Beck J (2013) Estimation metrics and optimal regularization in a Tikhonov digital filter for the inverse heat conduction problem. Int J Heat Mass Transf 62:31–39
Zeng Y, Wang H, Zhang S, Cai Y, Li E (2019) A novel adaptive approximate Bayesian computation method for inverse heat conduction problem. Int J Heat Mass Transf 134:185–197
Ohmichi M, Noda N, Sumi N (2017) Plane heat conduction problems in functionallygraded orthotropic materials. J Therm Stresses 40(6):747–764
Hsueh-Hsien LuH, Young D, Sladek J, Sladek V (2017) Three-dimensional analysis for functionally graded piezoelectric semiconductors. J Intell Mater Syst Struct 28(11):1391–1406
Hahn D, Özişik M (2012) Heat conduction. Wiley, Hoboken
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Technical Editor: Francis HR Franca, Ph.D..
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Naeimi, H., Kowsary, F. Finite Volume Monte Carlo (FVMC) method for the analysis of conduction heat transfer. J Braz. Soc. Mech. Sci. Eng. 41, 260 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40430-019-1762-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40430-019-1762-3