Improved Accuracy in the 2-D/1-D Method with Anisotropic Transverse Leakage and Cross-Section Homogenization

Abstract

The Two-Dimensional (2-D)/One-Dimensional (1-D) method allows pin-resolved computational transport solutions for large, full-core light water reactor simulations at relatively low computational cost compared to a true three-dimensional (3-D) transport method. The 2-D/1-D method constructs an approximation to the 3-D transport equation with (1) a 2-D transport equation in the radial variables and , discretized on a fine radial spatial grid, and (2) a 1-D transport (or approximate P_N) equation in the axial variable , discretized on a radially coarse spatial grid. The 2-D and 1-D equations are coupled through transverse leakage (TL) terms. In this paper, a new 2-D/1-D P₃ method with anisotropic transverse leakages and anisotropic homogenized 1-D cross sections (XSs) is proposed to improve the accuracy of conventional 2-D/1-D with pin homogenization. It is shown that only the polar component of the anisotropic homogenized XS has a significant effect on the solution; the azimuthal component is negligible. However, the polar and azimuthal components of the leakage terms are both important. The new method is implemented in the 2-D/1-D code Michigan PArallel Characteristics Transport (MPACT). The method in this paper is shown to achieve nearly 3-D transport accuracy with sufficient refinement in space and angle. The improvement of this new method compared to the previous 2-D/1-D method in MPACT is most notable in problems with strong axial leakage and sharp axial discontinuities, such as control rod tips or part-length rods. The method is computationally more expensive than the existing 2-D/1-D method with isotropic TL and XSs, but this additional cost may be justified when the axial flux shape does not vary smoothly due to axial heterogeneity and needs to be resolved well.

Keywords:

• Transport
• Two-Dimensional (2-D)/One-Dimensional (1-D) method, MPACT

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors, an Energy Innovation Hub (http://www.energy.gov/hubs) for Modeling and Simulation of Nuclear Reactors under US Department of Energy Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725.