The stochastic collocation method for radiation transport in random media

Abstract

Stochastic spectral expansions are used to represent random input parameters and the random unknown solution to describe radiation transport in random media. The total macroscopic cross section is taken to be a spatially continuous log-normal random process with known covariance function and expressed as a memoryless transformation of a Gaussian random process. The Karhunen–Loève expansion is applied to represent the spatially continuous random cross section in terms of a finite number of discrete Gaussian random variables. The angular flux is then expanded in terms of Hermite polynomials and, using a quadrature-based stochastic collocation method, the expansion coefficients are shown to satisfy uncoupled deterministic transport equations. Sparse grid Gauss quadrature rules are investigated to establish the efficacy of the polynomial chaos-collocation scheme. Numerical results for the mean and standard deviation of the scalar flux as well as probability density functions of the scalar flux and transmission function are obtained for a deterministic incident source, contrasting between absorbing and diffusive media.