High performance and high fidelity deterministic neutron transport methods for nuclear reactor lattice physics simulations

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The aim of this PhD project is to develop novel, self-adaptive. numerical algorithms on modern, multi-core and many-core, high performance distributed computing (HPC) hardware architectures that enable high-fidelity spatial and energy resonance self-shielding of large-scale nuclear reactor lattice physics simulations. The numerical algorithms will use the latest shared and distributed memory algorithms on multicore hardware architectures that have been augmented by manycore (GPU) hardware acceleration. The spatial and energy resonance self-shielding algorithms will comprise a suite of different resonance self-shielding algorithms ranging from equivalence-in-dilution methods (EM), sub-group methods (SGM), embedded self-shielding methods (ESSM), finite element discontiguous supportmethods (FEDS) and ultrafine self-shielding methods (USSM). This will enable a range of fidelities of spatial and energy self-shielding to be performed so that the relevant computational efficiencies and accuracies of the methods can be assessed. It will also enable methods that can investigate resonance inference effects (or mutual self-shielding) between different nuclides within host materials within the nuclear reactor core. The eventual aim will be to develop numerical algorithms that can perform spatial and energy self-shielding for multidimensional single and multiple nuclear fuel assemblies (so called colour-set nuclear reactor lattice physics calculations) as well as potentially compact nuclear reactor cores. The spatial discretisation will use exact geometry conforming Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline (NURBS) enhanced methods for resolving the spatial variation in the neutron distribution which will complement the high-fidelity energy resonance self-shielding methods. Space-energy adaptivity as well as hierarchical numerical solution algorithms in energy will also be exploited to improve the computational efficiency of the space and energy resonance self-shielding algorithms.