Parallel Jacobian-free Newton Krylov discrete ordinates method for pin-by-pin neutron transport models

A parallel Jacobian-Free Newton Krylov discrete ordinates method (comePSn_JFNK) is proposed to solve the multi-dimensional multi-group pin-by-pin neutron transport models, which makes full use of the good efficiency and parallel performance of the JFNK framework and the high accuracy of the Sn method for the large-scale models. In this paper, the k-eigenvalue and the scalar fluxes (rather than the angular fluxes) are chosen as the global solution variables of the parallel JFNK method, and the corresponding residual functions are evaluated by the Koch–Baker–Alcouffe (KBA) algorithm with the spatial domain decomposition in the parallel Sn framework. Unlike the original Sn iterative strategy, only a “flattened” power iterative process which includes a single outer iteration without nested inner iterations is required for the JFNK strategy. Finally, the comePSn_JFNK code is developed in C++ language and, the numerical solutions of the 2-D/3-D KAIST-3A benchmark problems and the 2-D/3-D full-core MOX/UOX pin-by-pin models with different control rod distribution show that comePSn_JFNK method can obtain significant efficiency advantage compared with the original power iteration method (comePSn) for the parallel simulation of the large-scale complicated pin-by-pin models.