Optimal Monte Carlo particle splitting for neutron transport equation

Abstract

Global tallying problem is hard to be solved efficiently when using Monte carlo method to simulate neutron transport equation, especially for sys- tem with big scale and/or strong imbalanced characteristics. Among numerous global variance reduction methods, particle splitting is an easy-to-implement method, but the efficiency is hard to be satisfying for practical problems. The essential challenge lies in the fact there are too many parameters to be opti- mized. In this paper, a systematic approach for setting all splitting parameters is proposed based on maximization of some global efficiency indicator. Results of two models show this approach can increase the global efficiency indicator up to two orders of magnitude while keeping the results unbiased.