Development and Validation of a Three-Dimensional Diffusion Code Based on a High Order Nodal Expansion Method for Hexagonal-z Geometry

Abstract

A three-dimensional, multigroup, diffusion code based on a high order nodal expansion method for hexagonal-z geometry (HNHEX) was developed to perform the neutronic analysis of hexagonal-z geometry. In this method, one-dimensional radial and axial spatially flux of each node and energy group are defined as quadratic polynomial expansion and four-order polynomial expansion, respectively. The approximations for one-dimensional radial and axial spatially flux both have second-order accuracy. Moment weighting is used to obtain high order expansion coefficients of the polynomials of one-dimensional radial and axial spatially flux. The partially integrated radial and axial leakages are both approximated by the quadratic polynomial. The coarse-mesh rebalance method with the asymptotic source extrapolation is applied to accelerate the calculation. This code is used for calculation of effective multiplication factor, neutron flux distribution, and power distribution. The numerical calculation in this paper for three-dimensional SNR and VVER 440 benchmark problems demonstrates the accuracy of the code. In addition, the results show that the accuracy of the code is improved by applying quadratic approximation for partially integrated axial leakage and four-order approximation for one-dimensional axial spatially flux in comparison to flat approximation for partially integrated axial leakage and quadratic approximation for one-dimensional axial spatially flux.