Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Generalized Fokker-Planck Approximations of Particle Transport with Highly Forward-Peaked Scattering

Journal Article · · Nuclear Science and Engineering
OSTI ID:20804700
The Fokker-Planck equation is often used to approximate the description of particle transport processes with highly forward-peaked scattering. Pomraning has shown that if the physical scattering kernel is sufficiently dominated by small-angle scattering, then the Fokker-Planck equation is an asymptotic approximation to the linear Boltzmann equation. However, most physically-meaningful scattering kernels contain a sufficient amount of large-angle scattering that the asymptotic criterion is not met. Thus, in many physical problems, solutions of the Fokker-Planck equation are substantially in error. In this paper, Pomraning's asymptotic results are generalized and a new generalized Fokker-Planck (GFP) theory that robustly incorporates large-angle scattering is developed. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the resulting GFP equations are much more accurate than the standard Fokker-Planck equation.
OSTI ID:
20804700
Journal Information:
Nuclear Science and Engineering, Journal Name: Nuclear Science and Engineering Journal Issue: 3 Vol. 137; ISSN NSENAO; ISSN 0029-5639
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Similar Records

Fokker-Planck approximation of monoenergetic transport processes
Journal Article · Fri Dec 30 23:00:00 EST 1994 · Transactions of the American Nuclear Society · OSTI ID:89119

The Fokker-Planck limit of a family of transport differencing methods
Journal Article · Wed Dec 30 23:00:00 EST 1998 · Transactions of the American Nuclear Society · OSTI ID:298296

A Generalized Fokker-Planck Model for Transport of Collimated Beams
Journal Article · Wed Mar 14 23:00:00 EST 2001 · Nuclear Science and Engineering · OSTI ID:20804699