Weighted Delta-Tracking in Scattering Media

TL;DR

This paper extends weighted delta-tracking to include scattering, demonstrating potential efficiency improvements in reactor physics calculations through tests on reactor pin cells.

Contribution

The authors develop a new weighted delta-tracking method that incorporates scattering, enhancing its applicability and efficiency in nuclear reactor simulations.

Findings

Improved figure of merit for flux and cross-section calculations.

Potential to enhance efficiency in fast reactor simulations.

Applicable to light water reactor calculations.

Abstract

In this work, we expand the weighted delta-tracking routine to include a treatment for scattering. The weighted delta-tracking routine adds survival biasing to normal delta-tracking, improving problem figure of merit. In the original formulation of this method, only absorption events were considered. We have expanded the method to include scattering and investigated the method's effectiveness with two test cases: a pressurized water reactor pin cell and a fast reactor pin cell. We compare the figure of merit for calculating infinite flux and total cross-section while incrementally changing the amount of weighted delta-tracking used. We find that this new WDT routine has strong potential to improve the efficiency of fast reactor calculations, and may be useful for light water reactor calculations.