Multilevel method to compute the lambda modes of the neutron diffusion equation

Abstract

Abstract Determination of the reactor kinetic characteristics is very important for the design and development of a new reactor system. In this sense, the computation of lambda modes associated to a nuclear power reactor has interest since these modes can be used to analyze the reactor criticality and to develop modal methods to analyze transient situations in the reactor. In this paper, the lambda problem has been discretized using a high order finite element method to obtain a generalized algebraic eigenvalue problem. A multilevel method is proposed to solve this generalized eigenvalue problem combining a hierarchy of meshes with a Modified Block Newton method. The Krylov-Schur method is used to compare the efficiency of the multilevel method solving several benchmark problems.