LAUSR

Abstract In recent years, Monte Carlo numerical methods have increased utilization to characterize the radiative properties of open cell solid foams. A great interest has been also observed in recent literature in methodologies to digitally generate foam-like structures to be used in Monte Carlo simulations. These approaches enable researchers to overcome the limitations of studies based on tomographic data. In this work, a novel methodology for generation of foam-like structures is presented. The method is based upon Voronoi partitions with random seeding points, combined with Surface Evolver to obtain a more realistic cell structure. The detailed geometrical characteristics of the struts are taken into account. The generated structures can be created to compare well to real tomographic samples. A number of characteristics of the resulting structure can be controlled. The application of Monte Carlo simulations to the generated structures allows the precise evaluation of each parameter’ influence on the extinction coefficient. This in turn makes it possible to propose some simplified analytical correlations. The correlations are validated against Monte Carlo simulations on tomographic data and compared with existing reference relations from literature. Finally, simplified forms of the relations are proposed.