title: High-resolution coupled physics solvers for analysing fine-scale nuclear reactor design problems.
abstract: An integrated multi-physics simulation capability for the design and analysis of current and future nuclear reactor models is being investigated, to tightly couple neutron transport and thermal-hydraulics physics under the SHARP framework. Over several years, high-fidelity, validated mono-physics solvers with proven scalability on petascale architectures have been developed independently. Based on a unified component-based architecture, these existing codes can be coupled with a mesh-data backplane and a flexible coupling-strategy-based driver suite to produce a viable tool for analysts. The goal of the SHARP framework is to perform fully resolved coupled physics analysis of a reactor on heterogeneous geometry, in order to reduce the overall numerical uncertainty while leveraging available computational resources. The coupling methodology and software interfaces of the framework are presented, along with verification studies on two representative fast sodium-cooled reactor demonstration problems to prove the usability of the SHARP framework.
authors: Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439, USA mahadevan@anl.gov.
authors: Vijay S
authors: VS
authors: Mahadevan
authors: Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439, USA.
authors: Elia
authors: E
authors: Merzari
authors: Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439, USA.
authors: Timothy
authors: T
authors: Tautges
authors: Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439, USA.
authors: Rajeev
authors: R
authors: Jain
authors: Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439, USA.
authors: Aleksandr
authors: A
authors: Obabko
authors: Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439, USA.
authors: Michael
authors: M
authors: Smith
authors: Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439, USA.
authors: Paul
authors: P
authors: Fischer
keywords: code coupling; multi-physics; reactor analysis