Conference Paper

Proceedings of Building Simulation 2019: 16th Conference of IBPSA

A Critical Evaluation of Radiance as a Tool for Calculating Radiation View Factors.

Sarith Subramaniam, Sabine Hoffmann
TU Kaiserslautern, Germany

DOI: https://doi.org/10.26868/25222708.2019.210617
Abstract: The research underlying this paper investigates the feasibility of using Radiance, an open source raytracing software, for calculating view factors. Radiance is intended, and predominantly used, as an engine for lighting simulations. The authors outline the methodology for using Radiance solely to calculate view factors and then provide a numerical critique of its computational speed vis-à-vis standard radiosity-based approach as implemented in another open source tool called View3D. The results from the case studies presented in this paper suggest that while Radiance is unlikely to be effective as a drop-in replacement for radiosity-based software, it can be advantageously leveraged in scenarios where view factors are to be calculated for only specific portions of the overall input geometry.
Keywords: Radiative Transfer, RADIANCE, Photovoltaic, Thermal Comfort
Pages: 1420 - 1427
Paper: