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Documentation for MeshKit - Reactor Geometry (&mesh) Generator

This report gives documentation for using MeshKit’s Reactor Geometry (and mesh) Generator (RGG) GUI and also briefly documents other algorithms and tools available in MeshKit. RGG is a program designed to aid in modeling and meshing of complex/large hexagonal and rectilinear reactor cores. RGG uses Argonne’s SIGMA interfaces, Qt and VTK to produce an intuitive user interface. By integrating a 3D view of the reactor with the meshing tools and combining them into one user interface, RGG streamlines the task of preparing a simulation mesh and enables real-time feedback that reduces accidental scripting mistakes that could waste hours of meshing. RGG interfaces with MeshKit tools to consolidate the meshing process, meaning that going from model to mesh is as easy as a button click. This report is designed to explain RGG v 2.0 interface and provide users with the knowledge and skills to pilot RGG successfully. Brief documentation of MeshKit source code, tools and other algorithms available are also presented for developers to extend and add new algorithms to MeshKit. RGG tools work in serial and parallel and have been used to model complex reactor core models consisting of conical pins, load pads, several thousands of axially varying material properties of instrumentation pins and other interstices meshes.

Jain, Rajeev↗

Update on Development of Mesh Generation Algorithms in MeshKit

MeshKit uses a graph-based design for coding all its meshing algorithms, which includes the Reactor Geometry (and mesh) Generation (RGG) algorithms. This report highlights the developmental updates of all the algorithms, results and future work. Parallel versions of algorithms, documentation and performance results are reported. RGG GUI design was updated to incorporate new features requested by the users; boundary layer generation and parallel RGG support were added to the GUI. Key contributions to the release, upgrade and maintenance of other SIGMA1 libraries (CGM and MOAB) were made. Several fundamental meshing algorithms for creating a robust parallel meshing pipeline in MeshKit are under development. Results and current status of automated, open-source and high quality nuclear reactor assembly mesh generation algorithms such as trimesher, quadmesher, interval matching and multi-sweeper are reported.

Jain, Rajeev↗

Mesh Copy/Move/Merge Tool for Reactor Simulation Applications

Reactor core simulations require the construction and mesh generation for core models consisting of lattices of fuel and other rods grouped into assemblies, and lattices of assemblies of several types grouped into a core model. A set of tools has been described for generating assembly and core lattice models. Both rectangular and hexagonal lattices are supported. The tools operate in three stages. First, assembly models of various types can be generated by the AssyGen tool, based on input describing the content of unit cells, the arrangement of unit cells in the lattice, and the extent of the lattice and any surrounding material. After generating the assembly model, the model is meshed with the CUBIT mesh generation toolkit, optionally based on a journal file output by AssyGen. After one or more assembly model meshes have been constructed, they are arranged in a core model using the CoreGen tool. The input for CoreGen is similar to that of AssyGen, with assembly models substituted for unit cells. AssyGen and CoreGen also annotate the models with material and volume groupings necessary for specifying materials and boundary conditions required by the analysis. The AssyGen and CoreGen tools are packaged in the open-source MeshKit library for mesh generation; download and build instructions are included in this document.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Generating unstructured nuclear reactor core meshes in parallel

Recent advances in supercomputers and parallel solver techniques have enabled users to run large simulations problems using millions of processors. Techniques for multiphysics nuclear reactor core simulations are under active development in several countries. Most of these techniques require large unstructured meshes that can be hard to generate in a standalone desktop computers because of high memory requirements, limited processing power, and other complexities. We have previously reported on a hierarchical lattice-based approach for generating reactor core meshes. Here, we describe efforts to exploit coarse-grained parallelism during reactor assembly and reactor core mesh generation processes. We highlight several reactor core examples including a very high temperature reactor, a full-core model of the Korean MONJU reactor, a ¼ pressurized water reactor core, the fast reactor Experimental Breeder Reactor-II core with a XX09 assembly, and an advanced breeder test reactor core. The times required to generate large mesh models, along with speedups obtained from running these problems in parallel, are reported. A graphical user interface to the tools described here has also been developed.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗