Numerical Solution of the k-Eigenvalue Problem.

摘要

Obtaining solutions to the k-eigenvalue form of the radiation transport equation is an important topic in the design and analysis of nuclear reactors. Although this has been an area of active interest in the nuclear engineering community for several decades, to date no truly satisfactory solution strategies exist. In general, existing techniques are either slow to converge for difficult problems or suffer from stability and robustness issues that can cause solvers to diverge for some problems. This work provides a comparison between a variety of methods and introduces a new strategy based on the Davidson method that has been used in other fields for many years but never for this problem. The Davidson method offers an alternative to the nested iteration structure inherent to standard approaches and allows expensive linear solvers to be replaced by a potentially cheap preconditioner. To fill the role of this preconditioner, a strategy based on a multigrid treatment of the energy variable is developed. Numerical experiments using the 2-D NEWT transport package are presented, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.