Iterative acceleration for two-dimensional long-characteristics transport problems /

We extend the transport synthetic acceleration (TSA) scheme

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Zika, Michael Raynold
Format: Thesis Book
Language:English
Published: [Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified] ; 1997.
Subjects:
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Description
Summary:We extend the transport synthetic acceleration (TSA) scheme
to the long characteristics spatial discretization for the
two-dimensional, assembly-level transport problem. This
synthetic method employs a simplified transport operator as
its low-order approximation. The TSA equations are expanded
to include opposing reflecting boundary conditions by
incorporating an angular residual at the problem boundary.
We develop a heterogeneous Fourier mode analysis to evaluate
the effect of material heterogeneities and mesh properties on
the performance of TSA. Our analysis shows that the spectral
radius of the TSA iteration operator is determined by the
"worst" mesh and material properties (optically-thin and
highly-scattering) even if these properties do not occur in
the same mesh cell. The Fourier analysis results also show
that TSA is effective at reducing the number of high-order
iterations required to reach convergence for both homogeneous
and heterogeneous model fuel assembly problems. We then
address difficulties unique to the long-characteristics
discretization with opposing reflecting boundary conditions
and describe our methods for overcoming them in a
computationally efficient way. Since the boundary angular
data exists on different grids in the high- and low-order
problems, we define restriction and prolongation operations
specific to the method of long characteristics to map between
the two grids. We then develop the procedure used to realize
the conjugate gradient (CG) method in the presence of
opposing reflection boundary conditions. The CG iteration
may only be applied to symmetric positive definite matrices;
this condition requires the algebraic elimination of the
boundary angular corrections from the low-order equations.
Evaluating the action of the resulting matrix on an arbitrary
vector involves two transport sweeps and a transmission
iteration. We present results of our acceleration scheme on
a simple test problem, a typical pressurized water reactor
assembly, and a typical boiling water reactor assembly.
Item Description:Vita.
"Major Subject: Nuclear Engineering".
Physical Description:xiii, 191 leaves : illustrations ; 28 cm.
Issued also on microfiche from University Microfilms Inc.
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references: pages 156-162.