Calculation of radiation exchange using macro-class viewfactors

Radiation exchange for large-scale terrains measuring more than 100km² at resolutions of 0.25m and containing billions of facets is a very complex problem for thermal solver simulations. Traditional thermal solvers have used ray-traced approaches to solve the radiation exchange energies but lack fidelity and introduce sampling error due to the limited number of rays that can be cast. A new approach using macro-class view factor maps and statistical temperature distributions for the terrains allow for more accurate calculation of radiation exchange energies in a fraction of the time as the traditional ray-traced solutions.