• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.790-802
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• 2022

Large-scale reactor simulation often requires the use of Monte Carlo calculation techniques to estimate important reactor parameters. One drawback of these Monte Carlo calculation techniques is they inevitably result in some uncertainty in calculated quantities. The present study includes parametric uncertainty quantification (UQ) and sensitivity analysis (SA) on the Advanced Test Reactor Critical (ATRC) facility housed at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and addresses some complications due to Monte Carlo uncertainty when performing these analyses. This approach for UQ/SA includes consideration of Monte Carlo code uncertainty in computed sensitivities, consideration of uncertainty from directly measured parameters and a comparison of results obtained from brute-force Monte Carlo UQ versus UQ obtained from a surrogate model. These methodologies are applied to the uncertainty and sensitivity of k_eff for two sets of uncertain parameters involving fuel plate geometry and fuel plate composition. Results indicate that the less computationally-expensive method for uncertainty quantification involving a linear surrogate model provides accurate estimations for k_eff uncertainty and the Monte Carlo uncertainty in calculated k_eff values can have a large effect on computed linear model parameters for parameters with low influence on k_eff.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.5
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• pp.1769-1780
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• 2022

A new method of dose calculation algorithm, called GPU-accelerated Monte Carlo and collapsed cone Convolution (GMCC) was developed to improve the calculation speed of BNCT treatment planning system. The GPU-accelerated Monte Carlo routine in GMCC is used to simulate the neutron transport over whole energy range and the Collapsed Cone Convolution method is to calculate the gamma dose. Other dose components due to alpha particles and protons, are calculated using the calculated neutron flux and reaction data. The mathematical principle and the algorithm architecture are introduced. The accuracy and performance of the GMCC were verified by comparing with the FLUKA results. A water phantom and a head CT voxel model were simulated. The neutron flux and the absorbed dose obtained by the GMCC were consistent well with the FLUKA results. In the case of head CT voxel model, the mean absolute percentage error for the neutron flux and the absorbed dose were 3.98% and 3.91%, respectively. The calculation speed of the absorbed dose by the GMCC was 56 times faster than the FLUKA code. It was verified that the GMCC could be a good candidate tool instead of the Monte Carlo method in the BNCT dose calculations.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.780-786
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• 2013

In the reliability-based design optimization of electromagnetic devices, the accurate and efficient reliability assessment method is very essential. The first-order sensitivity-assisted Monte Carlo Simulation is proposed in the former research. In order to improve its accuracy for wide application, in this paper, the second-order sensitivity analysis is presented by using the hybrid direct differentiation-adjoint variable method incorporated with the finite element method. By combining the second-order sensitivity with the Monte Carlo Simulation method, the second-order sensitivity-assisted Monte Carlo Simulation algorithm is proposed to implement reliability calculation. Through application to one superconductor magnetic energy storage system, its accuracy is validated by comparing calculation results with other methods.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.954-962
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• 2019

It is well known that the variance of tally is biased in a Monte Carlo calculation based on the power iteration method. Several studies have been conducted to estimate the real variance. Among them, the batch method, which was proposed by Gelbard and Prael, has been utilized actively in many Monte Carlo codes because the method is straightforward, and it is easy to implement the method in the codes. However, there is a problem when utilizing the batch method because the estimated variance varies depending on batch size. Often, the appropriate batch size is not realized before the completion of several Monte Carlo calculations. This study recognizes this shortcoming and addresses it by permitting selection of an appropriate batch size.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.5
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• pp.1902-1908
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• 2022

In many of the complex systems modeled in the field of nuclear engineering, it is often useful to use linear regression-based analyses to analyze relationships between model parameters and responses of interests. In cases where the response of interest is calculated by a simulation which uses Monte Carlo methods, there will be some uncertainty in the responses. Further, the reduction of this uncertainty increases the time necessary to run each calculation. This paper presents some discussion on how the Monte Carlo error in the response of interest influences the error in computed linear regression coefficients. A mathematical justification is given that shows that when performing linear regression in these scenarios, the error in regression coefficients can be largely independent of the Monte Carlo error in each individual calculation. This condition is only true if the total number of calculations are scaled to have a constant total time, or amount of work, for all calculations. An application with a simple pin cell model is used to demonstrate these observations in a practical problem.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
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• 2002.09a
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• pp.116-118
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• 2002

It has been noted that Monte Carlo simulations are the most accurate method to calculate dose distributions in any material and geometry. Monte Carlo transport algorithms determine the absorbed dose by following the path of representative particles as they travel through the medium. Accurate Monte Carlo dose calculations rely on detailed modeling of the radiation source. We modeled the effects of beam modifiers such as collimators, blocks, wedges, etc. of our accelerator, Varian Clinac 600C/D to ensure accurate representation of the radiation source using the EGSnrc based BEAM code. These were used in the EGSnrc based DOSXYZ code for the simulation of particles transport through a voxel based Cartesian coordinate system. Because Monte Carlo methods use particle-by-particle methods to simulate a radiation transport, more particle histories yield the better representation of the actual dose. But the prohibitively long time required to get high resolution and accuracy calculations has prevented the use of Monte Carlo methods in the actual clinical spots. Our ultimate aim is to develop a Monte Carlo dose calculation system designed specifically for radiation therapy planning, which is distinguished from current dose calculation methods. The purpose of this study in the present phase was to get dose calculation results corresponding to measurements within practical time limit. We used parallel processing and some variance reduction techniques, therefore reduced the computational time, preserving a good agreement between calculations of depth dose distributions and measurements within 5% deviations.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.240-248
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• 2003

The Monte Carlo calculation is the most accurate means of predicting radiation dose, but its accuracy is accompanied by an increase in the amount of time required to produce a statistically meaningful dose distribution. In this study, the effects on calculation time by introducing variance reduction techniques and increasing computing power, respectively, in the Monte Carlo dose calculation for a 6 MV photon beam from the Varian 600 C/D were estimated when maintaining accuracy of the Monte Carlo calculation results. The EGSnrc­based BEAMnrc code was used to simulate the beam and the EGSnrc­based DOSXYZnrc code to calculate dose distributions. Variance reduction techniques in the codes were used to describe reduced­physics, and a computer cluster consisting of ten PCs was built to execute parallel computing. As a result, time was more reduced by the use of variance reduction techniques than that by the increase of computing power. Because the use of the Monte Carlo dose calculation in clinical practice is yet limited by reducing the computational time only through improvements in computing power, introduction of reduced­physics into the Monte Carlo calculation is inevitable at this point. Therefore, a more active investigation of existing or new reduced­physics approaches is required.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.53-56
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• 1999

A Gaussian distribution was parametrized for the initial distribution of the electron beam emitted from a 6MeV medical linear accelerator. A percent depth dose was measured in a water phantom and the corresponding Monte Carlo calculations were performed starting from a Gaussian distribution for a range of standard deviations, ${\sigma}=0.1$, 0.15, 0.2, 0.25, and 0.3 with being the mean value for the Incident beam energy. When measurement and calculation were compared, the calculation with the Gaussian distribution for ${\sigma}=0.25$ turned out to agree best with the measurement. The results from the present work can be utilized as input energy data in planning an electron beam therapy with a Monte Carlo calculation.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics D
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• v.34D no.7
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• pp.37-44
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• 1997

A dadaptive refinement tetrahedron mesh has been presented for using in full band GaAs monte carlo simulation. A uniform tetrahedron mesh is used without regard to energy values and energy variety in case of the past full band simulation. For the uniform tetrahedron mesh, a fine tetrahedron is demanded for keeping up accuracy of calculation in the low energy region such as .GAMMA.-valley, but calculation time is vast due to usin gthe same tetrahedron in the high energy region. The mesh of this study, thererfore, is consisted of the fine mesh in the low energy and large variable energy region and rough mesh n the high energy. The density of states (DOS) calculated with this mesh is compared with the one of the uniform mesh. The DOS of this mesh is improved th efive times or so in root mean square error and the ten times in the correlation coefficient than the one of a uniform mesh. This refinement mesh, therefore, can be used a sthe basic mesh for the full band GaAs monte carlo simulation.

• Proceedings of the Korea Air Pollution Research Association Conference
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• 1999.04a
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• pp.293-294
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• 1999