PEBBLES Mechanics Simulation Speedup

Abstract

Pebble bed reactors contain large numbers of spherical fuel elements arranged randomly. Determining the motion and location of these fuel elements is required for calculating certain parameters of pebble bed reactor operation. These simulations involve hundreds of thousands of pebbles and involve determining the entire core motion as pebbles are recirculated. Single processor algorithms for this are insufficient since they would take decades to centuries of wall-clock time. This paper describes the process of parallelizing and speeding up the PEBBLES pebble mechanics simulation code. Both shared memory programming with the Open Multi-Processing API and distributed memory programming with the Message Passing Interface API are used in simultaneously in this process. A new shared memory lock-less linear time collision detection algorithm is described. This method allows faster detection of pebbles in contact than generic methods. These combine to make full recirculations on AVR sized reactors possible in months of wall clock time.