Multimesh anisotropic adaptivity for the Boltzmann transport equation

C. M J Baker, A. G. Buchan, C. C. Pain, P. E. Farrell, M. D. Eaton, P. Warner

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This article presents a new adaptive finite element based method for the solution of the spatial dimensions of the Boltzmann transport equation. The method applies a curvature based error metric to locate the under and over resolved regions of a solution and this, in turn, is used to guide the refinement and coarsening of the spatial mesh. The error metrics and re-meshing procedures are designed such that they enable anisotropic resolution to form in the mesh should it be appropriate to do so. The adaptive mesh enables the appropriate resolution to be applied throughout the whole domain of a problem and so increase the efficiency of the solution procedure. Another new approach is also described that allows independent adaptive meshes to form for each of the energy group fluxes. The use of independent meshes can significantly improve computational efficiency when solving problems where the different group fluxes require high resolution over different regions. The mesh to mesh interpolation is made possible through the use of a 'supermeshing' procedure that ensures the conservation of particles when calculating the group to group scattering sources. Finally it is shown how these methods can be incorporated within a solver to resolve both fixed source and eigenvalue problems. A selection of both fixed source and eigenvalue problems are solved in order to demonstrate the capabilities of these methods.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)411-426
Number of pages16
JournalAnnals of Nuclear Energy
Volume53
Early online date28 Nov 2012
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2013

Keywords

  • Anisotropic adaptivity
  • Boltzmann transport
  • Conservative interpolation
  • Finite elements

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