TY - GEN
T1 - Tightly coupled multiphysics simulations for Pebble bed reactors
AU - Park, H.
AU - Gaston, D.
AU - Kadioglu, S.
AU - Knoll, D.
AU - Martineau, R.
AU - Taitano, W.
AU - Lebrun-Grandie, D.
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - We have developed a simulation tool for Pebble-bed reactor (PBR), a type of Very High-Temperature gas-cooled Reactor (VHTR). The simulation tool, PRONGHORN, takes advantages of the Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation library, and is capable of solving multidimensional thermal-fluid and neutronics problems implicitly in parallel. Expensive Jacobian matrix formation is alleviated by the Jacobian-free Newton-Krylov method, and physics-based preconditioning is applied to improve the convergence. Validity of the thermal-fluid solver has been tested and the comparison has revealed a limitation of the current flow model (Darcy's flow) near boundaries, while the neutronics solver agrees well with other codes on the PBMR400 benchmark problem.
AB - We have developed a simulation tool for Pebble-bed reactor (PBR), a type of Very High-Temperature gas-cooled Reactor (VHTR). The simulation tool, PRONGHORN, takes advantages of the Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation library, and is capable of solving multidimensional thermal-fluid and neutronics problems implicitly in parallel. Expensive Jacobian matrix formation is alleviated by the Jacobian-free Newton-Krylov method, and physics-based preconditioning is applied to improve the convergence. Validity of the thermal-fluid solver has been tested and the comparison has revealed a limitation of the current flow model (Darcy's flow) near boundaries, while the neutronics solver agrees well with other codes on the PBMR400 benchmark problem.
KW - Jacobian-free Newton-Krylov
KW - Multiphysics coupling
KW - Pebble bed reactor
KW - Physics-based preconditioner
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=74549199306&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:74549199306
SN - 9781615673490
T3 - American Nuclear Society - International Conference on Mathematics, Computational Methods and Reactor Physics 2009, M and C 2009
SP - 234
EP - 245
BT - American Nuclear Society - International Conference on Mathematics, Computational Methods and Reactor Physics 2009, M and C 2009
T2 - International Conference on Mathematics, Computational Methods and Reactor Physics 2009, M and C 2009
Y2 - 3 May 2009 through 7 May 2009
ER -