HIGH-ORDER FINITE ELEMENTS FOR THE NEUTRON TRANSPORT EQUATION ON HONEYCOMB MESHES

¹ DEN - Service d’études des réacteurs et de mathématiques appliquées (SERMA) CEA, Université Paris-Saclay, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
² DEN - DTN/STMA/LMAG CEA Cadarache, F-13108 Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France

ansar.calloo@cea.fr
romain.le-tellier@cea.fr
david.labeurthre@cea.fr

Published online: 22 February 2021

Abstract

Presently, APOLLO3^® /MINARET solves the transport equation using the multigroup Sn method with discontinuous finite elements on triangular meshes with Lagrange polynomial bases. The goal of this work is to solve the spatial problem on hexagonal geometries in the context of honeycomb lattice reactors, without further refining the computational mesh. The idea here is to construct high-order basis functions on the hexagonal element in order to improve the trade-off between computational cost and accuracy, in particular for multiphysics simulations where, often, thermalhydraulic modelling requires only assembly-average cross-sections to be defined (e.g. severe accident of fast breeder reactors) i.e. the assemblies are assumed homogeneous. One approach to achieve this goal is through the use of generalised barycentric functions such as the Wachspress rational functions. This research endeavour deals with the application of Wachspress rational functions to the neutron transport equation for hexagonal geometries up to order 3. With this method, it is possible to decrease the number of spatial unknowns required for the same accuracy, and thus the computational burden for complex geometries, such as honeycomb lattices is reduced.