An Assessment of Coupling Algorithms for Nuclear Reactor Core Physics Simulations

Download or read book An Assessment of Coupling Algorithms for Nuclear Reactor Core Physics Simulations written by and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 17 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here we evaluate the performance of multiphysics coupling algorithms applied to a light water nuclear reactor core simulation. The simulation couples the k-eigenvalue form of the neutron transport equation with heat conduction and subchannel flow equations. We compare Picard iteration (block Gauss-Seidel) to Anderson acceleration and multiple variants of preconditioned Jacobian-free Newton-Krylov (JFNK). The performance of the methods are evaluated over a range of energy group structures and core power levels. A novel physics-based approximation to a Jacobian-vector product was developed to mitigate the impact of expensive on-line cross section processing steps. Numerical simulations demonstrating the efficiency of JFNK and Anderson acceleration relative to standard Picard iteration are performed on a 3D model of a nuclear fuel assembly. Finally, both criticality (k-eigenvalue) and critical boron search problems are considered.