An assessment of coupling algorithms for nuclear reactor core physics simulations
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
- North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh, NC (United States)
This paper evaluates 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 has been developed to mitigate the impact of expensive on-line cross section processing steps. Furthermore, 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. Both criticality (k-eigenvalue) and critical boron search problems are considered.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF); Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL); Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC); USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC05-00OR22725; AC04-94AL85000
- OSTI ID:
- 1247927
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1291340; OSTI ID: 1347462
- Report Number(s):
- SAND-2016-7579J; NT0304000; NEAF343
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Computational Physics, Vol. 311, Issue C; ISSN 0021-9991
- Publisher:
- ElsevierCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Web of Science
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