ACS Algorithm in Discrete Ordinates for Pressure Vessel Dosimetry

Nuclear Engineering Program, Mechanical Engineering Department, Virginia Tech, 900N Glebe Rd, Arlington, VA, USA

^a Corresponding author: waltersw@vt.edu

Published online: 3 February 2016

Abstract

The Adaptive Collision Source (ACS) method can solve the Linear Boltzmann Equation (LBE) more efficiently by adaptation of the angular quadrature order. This is similar to, and essentially an extension of, the first collision source method. Previously, the ACS methodology has been implemented into the TITAN discrete ordinates code, and has shown speedups of 2–4 on a simple test problem, with very little loss of accuracy (within a provided adaptive tolerance). This work examines the use of the ACS method for a more realistic problem: pressure vessel dosimetry with the VENUS-2 MOX-fuelled reactor dosimetry benchmark. The ACS method proved to be able to obtain accurate results while being approximately twice as efficient as using a constant quadrature in a standard source iteration scheme.