MOCUM: A two-dimensional method of characteristics code based on constructive solid geometry and unstructured meshing for general geometries

A transport theory code MOCUM based on the method of characteristics as the flux solver with an advanced general geometry processor has been developed for two-dimensional rectangular and hexagonal lattice and full core neutronics modeling. In the code, the core structure is represented by the constructive solid geometry that uses regularized Boolean operations to build complex geometries from simple polygons. Arbitrary-precision arithmetic is also used in the process of building geometry objects to eliminate the round-off error from the commonly used double precision numbers. Then, the constructed core frame will be decomposed and refined into a Conforming Delaunay Triangulation to ensure the quality of the meshes. The code is fully parallelized using OpenMP and is verified and validated by various benchmarks representing rectangular, hexagonal, plate type and CANDU reactor geometries. Compared with Monte Carlo and deterministic reference solution, MOCUM results are highly accurate. The mentioned characteristics of the MOCUM make it a perfect tool for high fidelity full core calculation for current and GenIV reactor core designs. The detailed representation of reactor physics parameters can enhance the safety margins with acceptable confidence levels, which lead to more economically optimized designs.

Highlight► A two-dimensional numerical code based on the method of characteristics is developed. ► The complex arbitrary geometries are represented by constructive solid geometry and decomposed by unstructured meshing. ► Excellent agreement between Monte Carlo and the developed code is observed. ► High efficiency is achieved by parallel computing.