Uncertainty Quantification of the Decay Gamma Source in Mesh-Based Shutdown Dose Rate Calculations
Not provided.
Nuclear Science & Technology↗
Engineering topics
Wilson, P. P. H.
Publications and source records attributed to Wilson, P. P. H..
Improved mesh based photon sampling techniques for neutron activation analysis
The design of fusion power systems requires analysis of neutron activation of large, complex volumes, and the resulting particles emitted from these volumes. Structured mesh-based discretization of these problems allows for improved modeling in these activation analysis problems. Finer discretization of these problems results in large computational costs, which drives the investigation of more efficient methods. Within an ad hoc subroutine of the Monte Carlo transport code MCNP, we implement sampling of voxels and photon energies for volumetric sources using the alias method. The alias method enables efficient sampling of a discrete probability distribution, and operates in 0(1) time, whereas the simpler direct discrete method requires 0(log(n)) time. By using the alias method, voxel sampling becomes a viable alternative to sampling space with the 0(1) approach of uniformly sampling the problem volume. Additionally, with voxel sampling it is straightforward to introduce biasing of volumetric sources, and we implement this biasing of voxels as an additional variance reduction technique that can be applied. We verify our implementation and compare the alias method, with and without biasing, to direct discrete sampling of voxels, and to uniform sampling. We study the behavior of source biasing in a second set of tests and find trends between improvements and source shape, material, and material density. Overall, however, the magnitude of improvements from source biasing appears to be limited. Future work will benefit from the implementation of efficient voxel sampling - particularly with conformal unstructured meshes where the uniform sampling approach cannot be applied. (authors)
37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
The Data Transfer Kit: A geometric rendezvous-based tool for multiphysics data transfer
The Data Transfer Kit (DTK) is a software library designed to provide parallel data transfer services for arbitrary physics components based on the concept of geometric rendezvous. The rendezvous algorithm provides a means to geometrically correlate two geometric domains that may be arbitrarily decomposed in a parallel simulation. By repartitioning both domains such that they have the same geometric domain on each parallel process, efficient and load balanced search operations and data transfer can be performed at a desirable algorithmic time complexity with low communication overhead relative to other types of mapping algorithms. With the increased development efforts in multiphysics simulation and other multiple mesh and geometry problems, generating parallel topology maps for transferring fields and other data between geometric domains is a common operation. The algorithms used to generate parallel topology maps based on the concept of geometric rendezvous as implemented in DTK are described with an example using a conjugate heat transfer calculation and thermal coupling with a neutronics code. In addition, we provide the results of initial scaling studies performed on the Jaguar Cray XK6 system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for a worse-case-scenario problem in terms of algorithmic complexity that shows good scaling on 0(1 x 104) cores for topology map generation and excellent scaling on 0(1 x 105) cores for the data transfer operation with meshes of O(1 x 109) elements. (authors)
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
Monte Carlo mesh tallies based on a Kernel Density Estimator approach using integrated particle tracks
A new Monte Carlo mesh tally based on a Kernel Density Estimator (KDE) approach using integrated particle tracks is presented. We first derive the KDE integral-track estimator and present a brief overview of its implementation as an alternative to the MCNP fmesh tally. To facilitate a valid quantitative comparison between these two tallies for verification purposes, there are two key issues that must be addressed. The first of these issues involves selecting a good data transfer method to convert the nodal-based KDE results into their cell-averaged equivalents (or vice versa with the cell-averaged MCNP results). The second involves choosing an appropriate resolution of the mesh, since if it is too coarse this can introduce significant errors into the reference MCNP solution. After discussing both of these issues in some detail, we present the results of a convergence analysis that shows the KDE integral-track and MCNP fmesh tallies are indeed capable of producing equivalent results for some simple 3D transport problems. In all cases considered, there was clear convergence from the KDE results to the reference MCNP results as the number of particle histories was increased. (authors)
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
A spectral analysis of the domain decomposed Monte Carlo method for linear systems
The domain decomposed behavior of the adjoint Neumann-Ulam Monte Carlo method for solving linear systems is analyzed using the spectral properties of the linear operator. Relationships for the average length of the adjoint random walks, a measure of convergence speed and serial performance, are made with respect to the eigenvalues of the linear operator. In addition, relationships for the effective optical thickness of a domain in the decomposition are presented based on the spectral analysis and diffusion theory. Using the effective optical thickness, the Wigner rational approximation and the mean chord approximation are applied to estimate the leakage fraction of stochastic histories from a domain in the decomposition as a measure of parallel performance and potential communication costs. The one-speed, two-dimensional neutron diffusion equation is used as a model problem to test the models for symmetric operators. In general, the derived approximations show good agreement with measured computational results. (authors)
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗