Improvements of the CMFD acceleration capability of OpenMOC

Wenbin Wu; Guillaume Giudicelli; Kord Smith; Benoit Forget; Dong Yao; Yingrui Yu; Qi Luo

Nuclear Engineering and Technology (Oct 2020)

Improvements of the CMFD acceleration capability of OpenMOC

Wenbin Wu,
Guillaume Giudicelli,
Kord Smith,
Benoit Forget,
Dong Yao,
Yingrui Yu,
Qi Luo

Affiliations

Wenbin Wu: Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA; Science and Technology on Reactor System Design Technology Laboratory, Nuclear Power Institute of China, NO. 328 Section 1 Changshun Ave, Shuangliu District, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, 610213, China; Corresponding author. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
Guillaume Giudicelli: Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA
Kord Smith: Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA
Benoit Forget: Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA
Dong Yao: Science and Technology on Reactor System Design Technology Laboratory, Nuclear Power Institute of China, NO. 328 Section 1 Changshun Ave, Shuangliu District, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, 610213, China
Yingrui Yu: Science and Technology on Reactor System Design Technology Laboratory, Nuclear Power Institute of China, NO. 328 Section 1 Changshun Ave, Shuangliu District, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, 610213, China
Qi Luo: Science and Technology on Reactor System Design Technology Laboratory, Nuclear Power Institute of China, NO. 328 Section 1 Changshun Ave, Shuangliu District, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, 610213, China

Journal volume & issue: Vol. 52, no. 10
pp. 2162 – 2172

Abstract

Read online

Due to its computational efficiency and geometrical flexibility, the Method of Characteristics (MOC) has been widely used for light water reactor lattice physics analysis. Usually acceleration methods are necessary for MOC to achieve acceptable convergence on practical reactor physics problems. Among them, Coarse Mesh Finite Difference (CMFD) is very popular and can drastically reduce the number of transport iterations. In OpenMOC, CMFD acceleration was implemented but had the limitation of supporting only a uniform CMFD mesh, which would often lead to splitting MOC source regions, thus creating an unnecessary increase in computation and memory use. In this study, CMFD acceleration with a non-uniform Cartesian mesh is implemented into OpenMOC. We also propose a quadratic fit based CMFD prolongation method in the axial direction to further improve the acceleration when multiple MOC source regions are contained in one CMFD coarse mesh. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the improvement of the CMFD acceleration capability in OpenMOC in terms of both efficiency and stability.

Published in Nuclear Engineering and Technology

ISSN: 1738-5733 (Print)
Publisher: Elsevier
Country of publisher: Korea, Republic of
LCC subjects: Technology: Electrical engineering. Electronics. Nuclear engineering: Nuclear engineering. Atomic power
Website: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/nuclear-engineering-and-technology

About the journal

Abstract

Keywords