• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제50권3호
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• pp.327-339
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• 2018

This article presents a new global-local hybrid coarse-mesh finite difference (HCMFD) method for efficient parallel calculation of pin-by-pin heterogeneous core analysis. In the HCMFD method, the one-node coarse-mesh finite difference (CMFD) scheme is combined with a nodal expansion method (NEM)-based two-node CMFD method in a nonlinear way. In the global-local HCMFD algorithm, the global problem is a coarse-mesh eigenvalue problem, whereas the local problems are fixed source problems with boundary conditions of incoming partial current, and they can be solved in parallel. The global problem is formulated by one-node CMFD, in which two correction factors on an interface are introduced to preserve both the surface-average flux and the net current. Meanwhile, for accurate and efficient pin-wise core analysis, the local problem is solved by the conventional NEM-based two-node CMFD method. We investigated the numerical characteristics of the HCMFD method for a few benchmark problems and compared them with the conventional two-node NEM-based CMFD algorithm. In this study, the HCMFD algorithm was also parallelized with the OpenMP parallel interface, and its numerical performances were evaluated for several benchmarks.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제55권4호
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• pp.1428-1438
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• 2023

A novel Fission Diffusion Synthetic Acceleration (FDSA) method is developed and implemented as a part of a hybrid neutronics method for source convergence acceleration and variance reduction in Monte Carlo (MC) criticality calculations. The acceleration of the MC calculation stems from constructing a synthetic operator and solving a low-order problem using information obtained from previous MC calculations. By applying the P₁ approximation, two correction terms, one for the scalar flux and the other for the current, can be solved in the low-order problem and applied to the transport solution. A variety of one-dimensional (1-D) and two-dimensional (2-D) numerical tests are constructed to demonstrate the performance of FDSA in comparison with the standalone MC method and the coupled MC and Coarse Mesh Finite Difference (MC-CMFD) method on both intended purposes. The comparison results show that the acceleration by a factor of 3-10 can be expected for source convergence and the reduction in MC variance is comparable to CMFD in both slab and full core geometries, although the effectiveness of such hybrid methods is limited to systems with small dominance ratios.