A Combined P₁ and Monte Carlo Model for Radiative Transfer in Multi-Dimensional Anisotropically Scattering Media

A combined two-step computational method incorporating (1) transport approximation of the scattering phase function, (2) P₁ approximation and the finite element method for computing the radiation source function at the first step, and (3) the Monte Carlo method for computing radiative intensity at the second step, is developed. The accuracy of the combined method is examined for model problems involving two multi-dimensional configurations of an anisotropically scattering medium. A detailed analysis is performed for a medium with scattering phase function described by a family of the Henyey–Greenstein functions. The accuracy of the two-step method is assessed by comparing the distribution of the radiative flux leaving the medium to that obtained by a reference complete Monte Carlo method. This study confirms the main results of previous papers on the errors of the two-step solution method. The combined method leads to a significant reduction in computational time as compared to the reference method, by at least 1 order of magnitude. Finally, possible applications of the combined method are briefly discussed.