Development and application of a discrete ordinates adjoint difference method for one-dimensional shield weight optimization

Abstract

An improved method for the weight optimization of one-dimensional layered shields has been developed. The radiation transport problem is represented by coupled neutron-gamma ray discrete ordinates' transport calculations. In the optimization procedure, forward and adjoint calculations are performed for the initial shield design. An approximate form of the perturbed adjoint is used in the adjoint difference approach to determine the effect of shield changes, and a simple closed. form optimization algorithm is used as in the ASOP code. Three realistic shield optimization problems were solved to demonstrate the capabilities of the method. A comparison bekeen the results obtained using this method and the ASOP code showed the agreement of the two methods to be very good and the new'method to be significantly faster.