An assessment of coupling algorithms for nuclear reactor core physics simulations

Hamilton, Steven; Berrill, Mark; Clarno, Kevin; Pawlowski, Roger; Toth, Alex; Kelley, C. T.; Evans, Thomas; Philip, Bobby

doi:10.1016/j.jcp.2016.02.012

Title: An assessment of coupling algorithms for nuclear reactor core physics simulations

Journal Article · Fri Apr 01 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Journal of Computational Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcp.2016.02.012· OSTI ID:1247927

Hamilton, Steven ^[1]; Berrill, Mark ^[1]; Clarno, Kevin ^[1]; Pawlowski, Roger ^[2]; Toth, Alex ^[3]; Kelley, C. T. ^[3]; Evans, Thomas ^[1]; Philip, Bobby ^[1]

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.

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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

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Cited by: 26 works

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Numerical methods for nonlinear equations Kelley, C. T. Acta Numerica, Vol. 27 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0962492917000113	journal	May 2018
The Improvement of Coupling Method in TINTE by Fully Implicit Scheme Zhang, Han; Guo, Jiong; Lu, Jianan Nuclear Science and Engineering, Vol. 190, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2018.1426299	journal	March 2018
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