Standalone BISON Through VERA: User's Manual

Technical Report · Fri Jun 03 04:00:00 EDT 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1342659· OSTI ID:1342659

Stimpson, Shane G. ^[1]

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1. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Activities to incorporate fuel performance capabilities into the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA) are receiving increasing attention. The multiphysics emphasis is expanding as the neutronics (MPACT) and thermal-hydraulics (CTF) packages are becoming more mature. Capturing the finer details of fuel phenomena (swelling, densification, relocation, gap closure, etc.) is the natural next step in the VERA Core Simulator (VERA-CS) development process since these phenomena are currently not directly taken into account. While several codes could be used to accomplish this, the BISON fuel performance code being developed by the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is the focus of ongoing work in the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL). Built on INL’s MOOSE framework, BISON uses the finite element method for geometric representation and a Jacobian-free Newton-Krylov (JFNK) scheme to solve systems of partial differential equations for various fuel characteristic relationships. There are several modes of operation in BISON, but, for this work, it uses a 2D azimuthally symmetric (R-Z) smeared-pellet model.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Consortium for Advanced Simulation of LWRs (CASL)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1342659
• Report Number(s): ORNL/TM--2016/204; NT0304000; NEAF343; CASL-U-2016-1099-000
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
FINITE ELEMENT METHOD
MANUALS
NUCLEAR FUELS
PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
PERFORMANCE
REACTORS
SIMULATION
SIMULATORS