Rapid Thermal Modeling

ThermoAnalytics proposes to create a streamlined process from CAD-to-thermal-model suitable for rapid prototyping and for virtual field-testing in synthetic natural environments. The use of thermal predictions in such applications has been restricted by the time required to build thermal models. Creating a mesh from geometry, adjusting the mesh to support thermal modeling, and model preprocessing can be painstaking and time-consuming. To achieve its goal, ThermoAnalytics will investigate innovative techniques to accelerate the thermal modeling process, and build a suite of tools to automate the most time-consuming modeling tasks. These tools address specific needs of designers and analysts: automated construction of meshes given CAD geometry, innovative "meshless" thermal solutions, and diagnostic and quick fix tools to repair meshes and models. ThermoAnalytics will also upgrade MuSES so that it is more tolerant of modeling defects, and to reduce model pre-processing time - specifically - the computation of radiation view factors. These improvements will alleviate user burden and reduce computational time. The resulting acceleration of the thermal modeling process will increase the size of the design space that can be explored during rapid design processes as well as permitting the introduction of new designs rapidly into real-time scene simulations.