LATTICE BOLTZMANN METHOD FOR SOLVING TIME-DEPENDENT RADIATION TRANSPORT AND REACTOR CRITICALITY PROBLEMS

The recently developed lattice Boltzmann equation (LBE) framework [1] for radiation transport is extended to solve time dependent nonequilibrium neutron transport problems. Dynamics of radiation and material energy exchange is modeled by coupling the radiation transport equation with the material energy equation in a one-dimensional isotropically scattering homogenous medium. The LBE equations are obtained for corresponding radiative or neutron transport in constant source and reactor criticality search problems. Furthermore, a two-dimensional D(2)Q(8) & D(2)Q(16) LBEs are proposed for solving the time-dependent neutron transport equation in a heterogenous media (e.g., a checkerboard lattice with pure scattering and absorbing cells). The results obtained with LBE are in good agreement with the existing discrete ordinate method results for the benchmark problem.