Accelerated Monte Carlo Fission Source Convergence with Fission Matrix and Kernel Density Estimators
Accurate solution of the k-eigenvalue form of the Boltzmann radiation transport equation is required in many application areas, including nuclear reactor analysis and criticality safety. Monte Carlo calculations are free of the discretization errors inherent to deterministic methods and therefore offer the most accurate solutions. However, converging the fission source can be difficult for many problems, resulting in either a substantial computational overhead or potential inaccuracies that negate many of the benefits of using Monte Carlo methods. Difficulty in converging the fission source occurs for two distinct reasons. The first is the existence of a high dominance ratio in the problem (i.e. the largest and second largest eigenvalues have approximately the same magnitude). The second difficulty arises due to undersampling of the fission source because an insufficient number of particle histories are simulated. The first difficulty is shared by deterministic solvers when using power iteration, while the second difficulty is unique to Monte Carlo solvers. In practice, both difficulties may be present in the same problem, compounding the difficulty in achieving a converged distribution. In this paper, we consider a new approach to accelerate the convergence of the fission source based on combining the use of fission matrix methods with kernel density estimators (KDEs). It has been observed that deterministic fission matrix methods show the potential to accelerate the convergence of the fission source in Monte Carlo criticality calculations but may introduce significant additional noise for difficult problems. In this paper, we have demonstrated the use of a KDE approach in combination with the fission matrix acceleration. Although the addition of the KDE initially slows the convergence of the fission matrix acceleration, it decreases the magnitude of the noise while still offering significantly improved convergence relative to analog Monte Carlo. (authors)