skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

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

Abstract

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.

Authors:
 [1];  [1];  [1];  [2];  [3];  [3];  [1];  [1]
  1. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  2. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
  3. North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh, NC (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
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 Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC); USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
OSTI Identifier:
1247927
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1291340; OSTI ID: 1347462
Report Number(s):
SAND-2016-7579J
Journal ID: ISSN 0021-9991; NT0304000; NEAF343
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC05-00OR22725; AC04-94AL85000
Resource Type:
Journal Article: Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Journal of Computational Physics
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 311; Journal Issue: C; Journal ID: ISSN 0021-9991
Publisher:
Elsevier
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS; Multiphysics; Jacobian-free Newton–Krylov; Anderson acceleration; Nuclear reactor analysis; 73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS; 97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING; multiphysics; nuclear reactor analysis

Citation Formats

Hamilton, Steven, Berrill, Mark, Clarno, Kevin, Pawlowski, Roger, Toth, Alex, Kelley, C. T., Evans, Thomas, and Philip, Bobby. An assessment of coupling algorithms for nuclear reactor core physics simulations. United States: N. p., 2016. Web. doi:10.1016/j.jcp.2016.02.012.
Hamilton, Steven, Berrill, Mark, Clarno, Kevin, Pawlowski, Roger, Toth, Alex, Kelley, C. T., Evans, Thomas, & Philip, Bobby. An assessment of coupling algorithms for nuclear reactor core physics simulations. United States. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcp.2016.02.012
Hamilton, Steven, Berrill, Mark, Clarno, Kevin, Pawlowski, Roger, Toth, Alex, Kelley, C. T., Evans, Thomas, and Philip, Bobby. 2016. "An assessment of coupling algorithms for nuclear reactor core physics simulations". United States. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcp.2016.02.012. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1247927.
@article{osti_1247927,
title = {An assessment of coupling algorithms for nuclear reactor core physics simulations},
author = {Hamilton, Steven and Berrill, Mark and Clarno, Kevin and Pawlowski, Roger and Toth, Alex and Kelley, C. T. and Evans, Thomas and Philip, Bobby},
abstractNote = {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.},
doi = {10.1016/j.jcp.2016.02.012},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1247927}, journal = {Journal of Computational Physics},
issn = {0021-9991},
number = C,
volume = 311,
place = {United States},
year = {Fri Apr 01 00:00:00 EDT 2016},
month = {Fri Apr 01 00:00:00 EDT 2016}
}

Journal Article:

Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 26 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

Save / Share:

Works referenced in this record:

Thermal-hydraulic and neutron-physical characteristics of a new SCWR fuel assembly
journal, January 2009


NURESIM – A European simulation platform for nuclear reactor safety: Multi-scale and multi-physics calculations, sensitivity and uncertainty analysis
journal, September 2011


Jacobian-free Newton–Krylov methods: a survey of approaches and applications
journal, January 2004


Acceleration of k -Eigenvalue/Criticality Calculations Using the Jacobian-Free Newton-Krylov Method
journal, February 2011


Newton’s Method for Solving k -Eigenvalue Problems in Neutron Diffusion Theory
journal, February 2011


Development and Implementation of a Newton-BICGSTAB Iterative Solver in the FORMOSA-B BWR Core Simulator Code
journal, May 2005


Consistent and accurate schemes for coupled neutronics thermal-hydraulics reactor analysis
journal, March 2009


Tightly Coupled Multiphysics Algorithms for Pebble Bed Reactors
journal, October 2010


Physics-based multiscale coupling for full core nuclear reactor simulation
journal, October 2015


ENDF/B-VII.1 Nuclear Data for Science and Technology: Cross Sections, Covariances, Fission Product Yields and Decay Data
journal, December 2011


A neutron balance approach in critical parameter determination
journal, September 2008


Iterative Procedures for Nonlinear Integral Equations
journal, October 1965


Two classes of multisecant methods for nonlinear acceleration
journal, March 2009


An accelerated Picard method for nonlinear systems related to variably saturated flow
journal, March 2012


Nonlinear Krylov acceleration applied to a discrete ordinates formulation of the k-eigenvalue problem
journal, April 2013


Anderson Acceleration for Fixed-Point Iterations
journal, January 2011


Convergence Analysis for Anderson Acceleration
journal, January 2015


Inexact Newton Methods
journal, April 1982


Hybrid Krylov Methods for Nonlinear Systems of Equations
journal, May 1990


Preconditioning Strategies for Fully Implicit Radiation Diffusion with Material-Energy Transfer
journal, January 2001


On Using Approximate Finite Differences in Matrix-Free Newton–Krylov Methods
journal, January 2008


A coupling methodology for mesoscale-informed nuclear fuel performance codes
journal, October 2010


Asymptotic Derivation of the Multigroup P 1 and Simplified P N Equations with Anisotropic Scattering
journal, July 1996


The Simplified P 3 Approximation
journal, January 2000


Simplified PN Approximations to the Equations of Radiative Heat Transfer and Applications
journal, December 2002


Denovo: A New Three-Dimensional Parallel Discrete Ordinates Code in SCALE
journal, August 2010


The AMP (Advanced MultiPhysics) Nuclear Fuel Performance code
journal, November 2012


A parallel multi-domain solution methodology applied to nonlinear thermal transport problems in nuclear fuel pins
journal, April 2015


Validation Study of Pin Heat Transfer for UO 2 Fuel Based on the IFA-432 Experiments
journal, July 2014


A Validation Study of Pin Heat Transfer for MOX Fuel Based on the IFA-597 Experiments
journal, October 2014


Efficient solution of the simplified P N equations
journal, March 2015


Globally Convergent Inexact Newton Methods
journal, May 1994


Works referencing / citing this record: