Higher order compact finite difference schemes for steady and transient solutions of space–time neutron diffusion model

Abstract

One of the most difficult tasks in the numerical simulation of nuclear reactors is to find solution of a system arising from spatial discretization of multidimensional multigroup neutron diffusion equations by finite difference method. The big disadvantage is that it requires smaller mesh spacing. Using smaller mesh spacing produces reasonable results but it consumes huge computational effort. In this work, we overcome this flaw by constructing higher order compact finite difference schemes to approximate the neutron leakage terms. The technique is based on using concentrated points around a central point instead of minimizing the mesh spacing taking into account the location of the diffusion coefficients. Beside the accuracy of the proposed schemes, the dimension of the coefficient matrix and therefore the complexity of the system still the same. Five point stencils with equally distance h in each direction are used to produce more than one of standard central difference formulas to be combined producing the fourth order finite difference scheme with order of accuracy O(h4). Also, seven point stencils are used to get the sixth order scheme with accuracy O(h6). The proposed fourth and sixth order schemes are highlighted through two theories. The maximum error norms and the convergence rates of the proposed schemes are discussed. For the time discretization, multi-step differential transform method MDTM is employed to solve the neutron diffusion model. To illustrate the applicability and accuracy of the proposed schemes, results are tested on some multidimensional homogenous and heterogeneous benchmark problems. Our static normalized assembly power densities that are obtained by dividing the whole core into just few dozens or hundreds of fuel assemblies are compared with the Improved SIDK, FLUENT and BRBFCM methods that divide the core into many thousands of fuel assemblies. It is proved that the obtained results are very close to those methods.