• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.35 no.10
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• pp.989-996
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• 2011

An understanding of the concentrated solar flux is critical for the analysis and design of solar-energy-utilization systems. The current work focuses on the development of an algorithm that uses the Monte Carlo ray-tracing method with excellent flexibility and expandability; this method considers both solar limb darkening and the surface slope error of reflectors, thereby analyzing the solar flux. A comparison of the modeling results with measurements at the solar furnace in Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) show good agreement within a measurement uncertainty of 10%. The model evaluates the concentration performance of the KIER solar furnace with a tracking accuracy of 2 mrad and a maximum attainable concentration ratio of 4400 sun. Flux variations according to measurement position and flux distributions depending on acceptance angles provide detailed information for the design of chemical reactors or secondary concentrators.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.83-89
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• 2011

In order to improve the calculation speed of an integrating-sphere simulator based on a ray-tracing method, parallel processing with OpenMP directive was implemented into the simulator and the randomness of Monte Carlo method was guaranteed by utilizing a parallel random number generator. It was confirmed that simulation results obtained with more than $10^7$ rays showed good agreement with theoretical results within the error range of 0.5%, and that the calculation speed improved as the number of threads increased. Finally, the spatial response distribution functions of a real integrating sphere were simulated and compared with previous results.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.35 no.12
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• pp.1383-1389
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• 2011

The current study focuses on the consistent analysis of heat transfer in multichannel volumetric solar receivers used for concentrating solar power. Changes in the properties of the absorbing material and channel dimensions are considered in an optical model based on the Monte Carlo ray-tracing method and in a one-dimensional heat transfer model that includes conduction, convection, and radiation. The optical model results show that most of the solar radiation energy is absorbed within a very small channel length of around 15 mm because of the large length-to-radius ratio. Classification of radiation losses reveals that at low absorptivity, increased reflection losses cause reduction of the receiver efficiency, notwithstanding the decrease in the emission loss. As the average temperature increases because of the large channel radius or small mass flow rate, both emission and reflection losses increase but the effect of emission losses prevails.

• Journal of KIISE
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• v.43 no.8
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• pp.835-840
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• 2016

Monte Carlo ray tracing has been widely used for simulating a diverse set of photo-realistic effects. However, this technique typically produces noise when insufficient numbers of samples are used. As the number of samples allocated per pixel is increased, the rendered images converge. However, this approach of generating sufficient numbers of samples, requires prohibitive rendering time. To solve this problem, image filtering can be applied to rendered images, by filtering the noisy image rendered using low sample counts and acquiring smoothed images, instead of naively generating additional rays. In this paper, we proposed a Stein's Unbiased Risk Estimator (SURE) based $\grave{A}$-Trous wavelet to filter the noise in rendered images in a near-interactive rate. Based on SURE, we can estimate filtering errors associated with $\grave{A}$-Trous wavelet, and identify wavelet coefficients reducing filtering errors. Our approach showed improvement, up to 6:1, over the original $\grave{A}$-Trous filter on various regions in the image, while maintaining a minor computational overhead. We have integrated our propsed filtering method with the recent interactive ray tracing system, Embree, and demonstrated its benefits.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.39 no.12
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• pp.927-934
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• 2015

In this study, we numerically investigated the concentration characteristics of a linear Fresnel reflector system that can drive a solar thermal absorption refrigeration system to be installed in Saudi Arabia. Using an optical modeling program based on the Monte Carlo ray-tracing method, we simulated the concentrated solar flux, concentration efficiency, and concentrated solar energy on four representative days of the year - the vernal equinox, summer solstice, autumnal equinox, and winter solstice. Except the winter solstice, the concentrations were approximately steady from 9 AM to 15 PM, and the concentration efficiencies exceed 70%. Moreover, the maximum solar flux around the solar receiver center changes only within the range of $13.0{\sim}14.6kW/m^2$. When we investigated the effects of the receiver installation height, reflector width, and reflector gap, the optimal receiver installation height was found to be 5 m. A smaller reflector width had a greater concentration efficiency. However, the design of the reflector width should be based on the capacity of the refrigeration system because it dominantly affects the concentrated solar energy. The present study was an essential prerequisite for thermal analyses of the solar receiver. Thus, an optical-thermal integration study in the future will assist with the performance prediction and design of the entire system.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.173-178
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• 2011

Nowadays, SELENE-2 is under development for the moon explorer rover in Japan. AXS(Active X-ray Spectrometer) sensor development among the candidated payloads will be on going by the world-wide co-operation. The thermal design, analysis and test will be specially performed by Korean institutes. CFD techniques are used for the conceptual design and analysis. Thin-shell plate meshes being applied by Monte-Carlo Ray Tracing Method are generated for the thermal radiation analysis. Lumped capacity model is employed for the thermal conduction simulation of the AXS payload itself. Various shapes of the payload configuration with thermal boundary conditions are proposed and selected on the purpose of the analysis of the initial design. The results of the analysis are supposed to be used as the baseline for the further detailed design of the AXS payload in the future.

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.04a
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• pp.223-228
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• 2011

The volumetric solar receiver is a key element of solar power plants using air. The solar flux distribution inside the receiver should be a priori known for its heat transfer modeling. Previous works have not considered characteristics of the solar flux although they change with radiative properties of receiver materials and receiver geometries. A numerical method, which is based on the Monte Carlo ray-tracing method, was developed in the current work. The solar flux distributions inside multi-channeled volumetric solar receivers were calculated when light is concentrated at the KIER solar furnace. It turned out that 99 percentage of the concentrated solar energy is absorbed within 15 mm charmel length for the charmel radius smaller than 1.5 mm. If the concentrated light is assumed to be diffuse, the absorbed solar energy at the charmel entrance region is overpredicted while the light penetrates more deeply into the charmel. The developed method will help understand the solar flux when only a part of concentrated light is of interest. Furthermore, if the presented results are applied for heat transfer modeling of multi-channeled volumetric solar receivers, one could examine effects of receiver charmel properties and shape on air temperature profiles.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.41-47
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• 2011

The volumetric solar receiver is a key element of solar power plants using air. The solar flux distribution inside the receiver should be a priori known for its heat transfer analysis. Previous works have not considered characteristics of the solar flux although they change with radiative properties of receiver materials and receiver geometries. A numerical method, which is based on the Monte Carlo ray-tracing method, was developed in the current work. The solar flux distributions inside multi-channeled volumetric solar receivers were calculated when light is concentrated at the KIER solar furnace. It turned out that 99 percentage of the concentrated solar energy is absorbed within 15mm channel length for the channel radius smaller than 1.5mm. If the concentrated light is assumed to be diffuse, the absorbed solar energy at the channel entrance region is over predicted while the light penetrates more deeply into the channel. Once the presented results are imported into the heat transfer analysis, one could examine effects of material property and geometry of the receiver on air temperature profiles.