Scalable parallel solution coupling for multiphysics reactor simulation

Reactor simulation depends on the coupled solution of various physics types, including neutronics, thermal/hydraulics, and structural mechanics. This paper describes the formulation and implementation of a parallel solution coupling capability being developed for reactor simulation. The coupling pro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of physics. Conference series Vol. 180; no. 1; p. 012017
Main Authors Tautges, Timothy J, Caceres, Alvaro
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Bristol IOP Publishing 01.07.2009
Subjects
Couplers
Coupling
Finite element method
Fluid flow
Hydraulics
Interpolation
Microprocessors
Numerical methods
Physics
Simulation
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Summary:Reactor simulation depends on the coupled solution of various physics types, including neutronics, thermal/hydraulics, and structural mechanics. This paper describes the formulation and implementation of a parallel solution coupling capability being developed for reactor simulation. The coupling process consists of mesh and coupler initialization, point location, field interpolation, and field normalization. We report here our test of this capability on an example problem, namely, a reflector assembly from an advanced burner test reactor. Performance of this coupler in parallel is reasonable for the chosen problem size and range of processor counts. The runtime is dominated by startup costs, which amortize over the entire coupled simulation. Future efforts will include adding more sophisticated interpolation and normalization methods, to accommodate different numerical solvers used in various physics modules and to obtain better conservation properties for certain field types.
ISSN:1742-6596
1742-6588
1742-6596
DOI:10.1088/1742-6596/180/1/012017