Advanced IR Scene Model

The next generation of surface combatants will be designed with stringent requirements on efficiency, performance, and survivability. To support their design, ThermoAnalytics successfully developed a thermal design and infrared scene-rendering tool based on the Army infrared analysis code MuSES and commercial thermal design tool RadTherm. This prototype used detailed heat transfer models, ray trace rendering with adjustable fidelity, a ship wake model with sea surface reflections, a water wash simulation, and an intuitive graphical user interface. In Phase II, ThermoAnalytics proposes to model viscous effects in gravity waves, empirically model sea surface temperature variations caused by mixing from propellers and hull turbulence, use adaptive scaling to efficiently render seaway radiance in the near and far fields, and integrate the thermal solver with CFD, exhaust plume models, and streamlined CAD interfaces. The tool will include options to incorporate CFD results for accurate modeling of convection off exterior ship surfaces as well as verified convection correlations tailored for ship modeling. Both the target model and sea surface will be rendered using a multi-bounce ray tracer that supports multi-lobe and anisotropic BRDF. The proposed modeling and simulation tool will be reliable, portable, modular, and physically accurate enough to achieve LO design levels.