Verification of the 3D Method of characteristics solver in OpenMOC
The Method of Characteristics (MOC) has seen wide interest in full-core reactor physics analysis due to its computational efficiency and ability to easily treat complex geometries. Recently, the OpenMOC reactor physics code was extended to include 3D MOC capability. In this study, we present verif...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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American Nuclear Society
2017
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/109791 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2825-4961 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2413-5052 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1459-7672 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2497-4312 |
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| author | Shaner, Samuel Christopher Gunow, Geoffrey Alexander Forget, Benoit Robert Yves Smith, Kord S. |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering Shaner, Samuel Christopher Gunow, Geoffrey Alexander Forget, Benoit Robert Yves Smith, Kord S. |
| author_sort | Shaner, Samuel Christopher |
| collection | MIT |
| description | The Method of Characteristics (MOC) has seen wide interest in full-core reactor physics analysis due to its computational efficiency and ability to easily treat complex geometries. Recently, the OpenMOC reactor physics code was extended to include 3D MOC capability. In this study, we present verification for the 3D MOC solver in OpenMOC and sensitivity of 3D MOC to the axial geometry discretization and axial track laydown. Results for the Takeda Model 1 benchmark show excellent agreement with the reference eigenvalues. A sensitivity study was conducted on a UO [subscript 2] quarter-assembly extracted from the C5G7 3D unrodded benchmark geometry in order to show the effect of the axial MOC parameters on the solution eigenvalue for a heterogeneous problem. The sensitivity results demonstrated that the solution accuracy was highly dependent on the axial source region discretization, but insensitive to axial spacing between tracks below ~0.2 cm. Using the equal angle quadrature set, at least 10 and 18 polar angles were required to converge the problem to with 100 and 10 pcm, respectively. These results both verify the 3D MOC solver in OpenMOC and provide in |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:05:22Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/109791 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:05:22Z |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| publisher | American Nuclear Society |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1097912022-10-01T12:59:09Z Verification of the 3D Method of characteristics solver in OpenMOC Shaner, Samuel Christopher Gunow, Geoffrey Alexander Forget, Benoit Robert Yves Smith, Kord S. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering Shaner, Samuel Christopher Gunow, Geoffrey Alexander Forget, Benoit Robert Yves Smith, Kord S. The Method of Characteristics (MOC) has seen wide interest in full-core reactor physics analysis due to its computational efficiency and ability to easily treat complex geometries. Recently, the OpenMOC reactor physics code was extended to include 3D MOC capability. In this study, we present verification for the 3D MOC solver in OpenMOC and sensitivity of 3D MOC to the axial geometry discretization and axial track laydown. Results for the Takeda Model 1 benchmark show excellent agreement with the reference eigenvalues. A sensitivity study was conducted on a UO [subscript 2] quarter-assembly extracted from the C5G7 3D unrodded benchmark geometry in order to show the effect of the axial MOC parameters on the solution eigenvalue for a heterogeneous problem. The sensitivity results demonstrated that the solution accuracy was highly dependent on the axial source region discretization, but insensitive to axial spacing between tracks below ~0.2 cm. Using the equal angle quadrature set, at least 10 and 18 polar angles were required to converge the problem to with 100 and 10 pcm, respectively. These results both verify the 3D MOC solver in OpenMOC and provide in United States. Office of the Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy (Nuclear Energy Uni- versity Programs Fellowship) Center for Exascale Simulation of Advanced Reactors (Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357) 2017-06-12T15:39:17Z 2017-06-12T15:39:17Z 2016-05 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/ConferencePaper 978-1-5108-2573-4 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/109791 Shaner, Samuel, Geoffrey Gunow, Benoit Forget, and Kord Smith. "Verification of the 3D Method of Characteristics Solver in OpenMOC." Physics of Reactors. Conference 2016 (Physor 2016) (1-5 May 2016) https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2825-4961 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2413-5052 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1459-7672 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2497-4312 en_US http://www.proceedings.com/30896.html Physics of Reactors. Conference 2016 (Physor 2016) Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf American Nuclear Society Prof. Forget via Chris Sherratt |
| spellingShingle | Shaner, Samuel Christopher Gunow, Geoffrey Alexander Forget, Benoit Robert Yves Smith, Kord S. Verification of the 3D Method of characteristics solver in OpenMOC |
| title | Verification of the 3D Method of characteristics solver in OpenMOC |
| title_full | Verification of the 3D Method of characteristics solver in OpenMOC |
| title_fullStr | Verification of the 3D Method of characteristics solver in OpenMOC |
| title_full_unstemmed | Verification of the 3D Method of characteristics solver in OpenMOC |
| title_short | Verification of the 3D Method of characteristics solver in OpenMOC |
| title_sort | verification of the 3d method of characteristics solver in openmoc |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/109791 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2825-4961 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2413-5052 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1459-7672 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2497-4312 |
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