On the Reconstruction of Pinwise Flux Distribution Using Several Types of Boundary Conditions

Abstract

We reconstruct the assembly pinwise flux using several types of boundary conditions and confirm that the reconstructed fluxes are the same with the reference flux if the boundary condition is exact. We test EPRI-9R benchmark problem with four boundary conditions, such as Dirichlet boundary condition, Neumann boundary condition, homogeneous mixed boundary condition (albedo type), and inhomogeneous mixed boundary condition. We also test reconstruction of the pinwise flux from nodal values, specifically from the AFEN [1, 2] results. From the nodal flux distribution we obtain surface flux and surface current distributions, which can be used to construct various types of boundary conditions. The result show that the Neumann boundary condition cannot be used for iterative schemes because of its ill-conditioning problem and that the other three boundary conditions give similar accuracy. The Dirichlet boundary condition requires the shortest computing time. The inhomogeneous mixed boundary condition requires only slightly longer computing time than the Dirichlet boundary condition, so that it could also be an alternative. In contrast to the fixed-source type problem resulting from the Dirichlet, Neumann, inhomogeneous mixed boundary conditions, the homogeneous mixed boundary condition constitutes an eigenvalue problem and requires longest computing time among the three (Dirichlet, inhomogeneous mixed, homogeneous mixed) boundary condition problems.