Nuclear Engineering and Technology 54 (2022) 532e545

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Nuclear Engineering and Technology

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Original article

Convergence analysis of fixed-point iteration with Anderson

Acceleration on a simplified neutronics/thermal-hydraulics system
Jaejin Lee*, Han Gyu Joo
Seoul National University, 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, 08826, Republic of Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In-depth convergence analyses for neutronics/thermal-hydraulics (T/H) coupled calculations are per-
Received 25 June 2021 formed to investigate the performance of nonlinear methods based on the Fixed-Point Iteration (FPI). A
Received in revised form simplified neutronics-T/H coupled system consisting of a single fuel pin is derived to provide a testbed.
29 July 2021
The xenon equilibrium model is considered to investigate its impact during the nonlinear iteration. A
Accepted 3 August 2021
Available online 4 August 2021
problem set is organized to have a thousand different fuel temperature coefficients (FTC) and moderator
temperature coefficients (MTC). The problem set is solved by the Jacobi and Gauss-Seidel (G-S) type FPI.
The relaxation scheme and the Anderson acceleration are applied to improve the convergence rate of FPI.
Keywords:
Fixed-point iteration
The performances of solution schemes are evaluated by comparing the number of iterations and the
Anderson acceleration error reduction behavior. From those numerical investigations, it is demonstrated that the number of FPIs
Convergence analysis is increased as the feedback is stronger regardless of its sign. In addition, the Jacobi type FPIs generally
Thermal-hydraulic feedback shows a slower convergence rate than the G-S type FPI. It also turns out that the xenon equilibrium
model can cause numerical instability for certain conditions. Lastly, it is figured out that the Anderson
acceleration can effectively improve the convergence behaviors of FPI, compared to the conventional
relaxation scheme.
© 2021 Korean Nuclear Society, Published by Elsevier Korea LLC. This is an open access article under the
CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction
Simulating nuclear reactors is essential for core designs and
safety analyses. However, the prediction is challenging because
various physical phenomena occur simultaneously inside reactors
while a solution of each physics influences that of other physics.
Especially, the thermal feedback between neutronics and thermal-
hydraulics (T/H) is the most important phenomenon that generates
a system of nonlinear equations. To resolve this nonlinearity, the
Fixed-Point Iteration (FPI) or Picard iteration is widely used.
Because the fixed-point iteration is easy to implement and to keep
the modularity of each solution algorithm, it is very attractive when
a multiphysics simulation tool is established through code coupling
[1]. For example, for the high-fidelity core simulation, many pin-
wise coupled systems with a neutronics code and a subchannel T/H
code [2e4] have been developed based on FPI.
However, a slow convergence rate and poor robustness of FPI
have been pointed out as the main drawback [5]. Its performance
significantly varies with problem conditions such as the linear
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jjlee07@snu.ac.kr (J. Lee).
power density, cladding or fuel conductivity, and coolant flow rate
[6,7]. Sometimes, in certain conditions, it does not converge due to
oscillatory instability [6,7]. To improve the performance of FPI, a
relative local tolerance [1] can be introduced to avoid over-solving
within a single physics, or more commonly, the relaxation scheme
is applied to enhance the convergence rate of FPI. However, for
these approaches, heuristic scanning is forced to find the optimum
factor or tolerance. The Anderson acceleration [8], in this regard,
can be a good methodology to resolve the convergence issue of FPI
without relying on the heuristic approach. In the multiphysics
reactor simulation, its effectiveness was well-demonstrated with a
one-dimensional (1-D) simplified problem [7], single assembly
problems [9,10], and core-level problems [11,12], but the perfor-
mance assessments were mostly carried out under steady-state
normal conditions of Pressure Water Reactors (PWRs).
In addition, the convergence rate of FPI is closely related to its
solution procedure which is commonly either the Jacobi style or the
Gauss-Seidel (G-S) style. The Jacobi style FPI has a strength on the
parallelization (or tandem execution) because each set of physics is
independently solved and updated at the end of the iteration,
whereas its convergence rate is usually slower than that of the G-S
style FPI [9,13]. This implies that due to more iterations to converge,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.net.2021.08.005
1738-5733/© 2021 Korean Nuclear Society, Published by Elsevier Korea LLC. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
J. Lee and H.G. Joo Nuclear Engineering and Technology 54 (2022) 532e545

a parallel execution by the Jacobi scheme might even take a longer    

wall-clock time than a serial execution by the G-S scheme [9]. Thus, S Tf ; Tc ¼ S Tf ;base ; Tc;base
comparing and quantifying the convergence rate between two    
schemes is helpful to identify the net computational benefit that vS Tf ; Tc qffiffiffiffiffi qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi  vS Tf ; Tc  
can be achieved from one side. þ qffiffiffiffiffi Tf
Tf ;base þ Tc
Tc;base
v Tf vT c
For those reasons, we perform in-depth convergence analyses
on neutronics-T/H coupled calculations with various FPI-based (3)
nonlinear methods to investigate their performances in an exten-
sive range of T/H feedback including the nominal steady-state where the subscript base means the base condition. The neutron
condition. For a testbed of the convergence analysis, we design a flux is normalized by a prescribed power. The above procedure can
simplified one-dimensional (1-D) couple system consisting of a be alternatively rewritten as below:
single fuel pin and coolant. Then, we establish and solve a problem  
set with a thousand unique cases where the magnitudes of thermal f ¼ NT Τf ; Tc (4)
feedback are controlled by the variation of fuel temperature co-
efficients (FTCs) and moderator temperature coefficients (MTCs). In
by adopting the neutronic operation NT where Tf and Tc is the so-
addition, we examine the impact of the xenon equilibrium (Xe Eq.)
lution vector of fuel temperature and coolant for discretized nodes.
model on the coupled calculation, which is another essential
feedback mechanism in reactors [14]. For those problems, we
2.2. Heat conduction equation for fuel temperature
compare the convergence behaviors of the Jacobi and G-S style FPI.
Then, we apply the relaxation scheme and the Anderson acceler-
For simplicity, the heat conduction to the radial direction is only
ation to FPI and investigate their effectiveness to improve the
considered and the azimuthal symmetry is assumed. Then, the
convergence rate of FPI.
conduction equation in the cylindrical coordinate for fuel pellet can
In the following, the derivation of the 1-D simplified coupled
be formulated as below:
system will be presented first. Then, the numerical methods about
FPI and AA will be explained to solve the nonlinearity of the

000 1 v vT
neutronics-T/H coupled system. Finally, their performances will be q þ rk ¼0 (5)
r vr vr
demonstrated and assessed through the convergence analysis.
where k is the thermal conductivity and qʹʹʹ is the volumetric heat
2. Physical models generation rate. It is assumed that the fuel rod consists of only the
fuel pellet and cladding without the gap. In addition, the constant
A simplified neutronics-T/H coupled system is modeled by thermal properties and the symmetry condition at the centerline of
having the interdependency between neutron flux distribution and fuel are assumed. Newton's law of cooling is used to derive the
temperature distribution of fuel and coolant. The geometry of the relation between cladding temperature and coolant bulk temper-
model is a single fuel pin in Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs). The ature Tc,bulk:
steady-state is assumed. The one-dimensional and one-group (1-D 00  
and 1-G) diffusion equation, 1-D radial heat conduction equation, qw ¼ hw Tðrco Þ
Tc;bulk (6)
and 1-D heat convection equation are used as governing equations
of neutron flux, fuel temperature, and coolant temperature where rco is the outer radius of cladding, qʹʹw is the heat flux from
respectively. the wall (cladding surface), and hw is the heat transfer coefficient of
the wall. From the above assumptions and equations, the volu-
metric average fuel temperature can be derived as follows:
2.1. Diffusion equation
ð rf
rTðrÞdr q0 !
The 1-D and 1-G diffusion equation can be written as below: f 1 1 rco 1
0
Tf ;avg ¼ ð rf ¼ þ ln þ þ Tc;bulk (7)

 p 8kf 2kc rf 2rco hw
d d rdr

Dðx; TÞ fðxÞ þ Sa ðx; TÞfðxÞ 0
dx dx
(1)
1 where rf is the radius of the fuel pellet, and kf and kc indicate the
¼ nSf ðx; TÞfðxÞ
keff thermal conductivity of fuel and cladding respectively. qʹf is the
linear heat generation rate of the fuel that is calculated from the
where f is the neutron scalar flux, D is the diffusion coefficient, S is normalized scalar flux (f). Based on the above derivation, we can
the macroscopic cross-section, n is the mean number of neutrons express the fuel temperature calculation with the thermal con-
per fission, and keff is the effective multiplication factor. The sub- duction operation, FC, as follows:
scripts a and f denote absorption and fission respectively. The
variables x and T mean the axial position and temperature. By Tf ¼ FCðf; Tc Þ (8)
applying the Finite Difference Method (FDM) with N meshes, Eq. (1)
can turn into a linear system: which shows a dependency on the neutron flux and coolant
temperature.
Mf ¼ lFf (2)
2.3. Heat convection equation for coolant temperature
where M is a tridiagonal matrix, F is a diagonal matrix, f ¼ ½f1 ; /;
fN  is the solution vector of neutron flux, and l is an inverse of keff The conservation equations of the fluid are simplified with
(or eigenvalue). Here, the matrix coefficients depend on the tem- several assumptions. First, the mass flow rate is constant due to the
perature dependence of fuel (Tf) and coolant (Tc) because they mass continuity equation with the steady-state condition. Second,
consist of temperature-dependent cross-sections as follows: the constant pressure is assumed over a problem domain, so the
533
J. Lee and H.G. Joo Nuclear Engineering and Technology 54 (2022) 532e545

momentum equation is not considered. Finally, by the energy 3.1. Fixed-point iteration
conservation, the enthalpy within node(i) can be calculated as
below: The solution procedure of FPI to solve the neutronics-T/H
coupled system is demonstrated in Table 1. In the algorithm, the
q0i Dxi relaxation scheme is additionally applied to fuel temperature
hi;out ¼ þ hi;in (9)
m_ 0 where u < 1 is the under-relaxation and u > 1 is the over-
relaxation. By depending on which step of the neutron flux infor-
where m_ 0 is the mass flow rate, Dx is the node length, h is the mation is used for T/H calculations, the procedure can be treated as
specific enthalpy, and the subscripts in and out are surface indices Jacobi or G-S style. Fig. 2 clearly shows the difference between the
as described in Fig. 1. The enthalpy at the center of a node is simply two methods.
calculated by:

1 
3.2. Anderson Acceleration
hi ¼ h þ hi;in (10)
2 i;out
If there is a system of nonlinear equation
and the temperature can be calculated by a steam table with a
function of enthalpy and presumed pressure: fðxÞ ¼ 0 (16)


Tc;i ¼ fsteam hi ; P (11) where f ¼ ½f1 ; f2 ; /; fn T is a n-dimensional vector of scalar func-
tions and x ¼ ½x1 ; x2 ; /; xn T is a n-dimensional solution vector, the
Likewise, we define the thermal-hydraulic operator, TH, which equivalent system of eq. (16) can be constructed as below:
corresponds to the above procedure calculating the coolant tem- Table 1
perature. Then, the calculation of coolant temperature can be FPI and relaxation scheme for 1-D simplified coupled system.
written as follows:
Given f0 , T0c , T0f .
for k ¼ 0, 1, … do
Tc ¼ THðfÞ (12) ðkÞ ðkÞ
Update SðTf ; Tc Þ.
ðkÞ ðkÞ
Solve fðkþ1Þ ¼ NTðΤf ; Τc Þ.
ðkþ1Þ k for Jacobi
Solve Tc ¼ THðfðmÞ Þ; m ¼
k þ 1 for G
S
3. Numerical solution methods for coupled system ðkþ1Þ k for Jacobi
Solve T*f ¼ FCðfðmÞ ; Tc Þ; m ¼ .
k þ 1 for G
S
ðkþ1Þ ðkÞ
Set Tf ¼ uT*f þ ð1
uÞTf .
Now, we have the following three systems to solve:
end for
 
f ¼ NT Τf ; Tc (13)

Tc ¼ THðfÞ (14)

Tf ¼ FCðf; Tc Þ (15)

where one equation for neutronics and two equations for T/H. In
the following, the solution algorithms of the fixed-point iteration
(FPI) and the Anderson acceleration (AA) for the above nonlinear
equations are explained.

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of marching scheme for simplified heat convection

equation.

Fig. 2. Iteration procedure of FPI in Jacobi and G-S style for neutronics-T/H coupled
calculation.

534
J. Lee and H.G. Joo Nuclear Engineering and Technology 54 (2022) 532e545

4.2. Problem with boron concentration variation

x ¼ gðxÞ (17)
For the first step, the convergence analysis for FPI is performed
For a system of nonlinear equations as eq. (17), the Anderson ac- for a problem set having different boron concentrations. Here, the
celeration algorithm can be written as shown in Table 2. The idea of optimization scheme such as the Anderson acceleration or relaxa-
this method is to determine the solution at (kþ1)-th iteration as a tion is not applied yet, and only the comparison between G-S and
linear combination of solution history g where the coefficients are Jacobi style of FPI is carried out.
determined by minimizing the norm of residual vectors f. There is a For the neutronics calculation, the assembly-homogenized and 1-
parameter m, the storage depth of Anderson acceleration, that G condensed macroscopic cross-sections were generated by nTRACER
determines how many histories will be stored. The Anderson ac- [16] from the 47-group library and a heterogeneous lattice structure
celeration with a specific m becomes Anderson-m. The parameter b with a C0 assembly of OPR1000 at cycle 1 (Fig. 3). To consider the
is the Anderson mixing coefficient that plays a similar role to the temperature dependency on the group constants, they were gener-
damping factor or relaxation factor. In Refs. [7,9], it turned out that ated in several temperature points of fuel and coolant. The reference
the performance of nonlinear iterations is insensitive to the choice temperature was [Tf ¼ 600 K, Tc ¼ 600 K] and temperature variations
of the mixing parameter b within a range from 0.5 to 1.0, so we use were given as [Tf ¼ 1,200 K, Tc ¼ 600 K] and [Tf ¼ 600 K, Tc ¼ 570 K]. The
b ¼ 1 for all Anderson accelerations in this study. More details boron concentrations were changed by 0 ppm, 1000 ppm, and
about the calculation process can be found in Ref. [15]. 2000 ppm to consider the boron effect on the MTC and FTC. The
For the 1-D neutronics-T/H coupled system derived in Chapter 2, generated group constants are given in Table 3 and Table 4. According
the fixed-point map of the Anderson acceleration in the Jacobi to eq. (3), FTC is calculated by dividing reactivity change by the change
scheme can be established as below: of square root of fuel temperature. The values of FTCs are
2 3ðkþ1Þ 02 3 1 2   3ðkÞ around
110 ~
130 pcm/sqrt(K) or
2 pcm/K, and it shows a weak
ðkÞ
f f NT Tf ; Tc dependency on the boron concentration. For the coolant temperature
4 Tc 5 B C 6 7
¼ gj @4 Tc 5 A ¼ 4 THðfÞ 5 : (18) variation, on the other hand, significant changes of MTC are observed
Tf Tf FCðTc ; fÞ by the boron concentration. The MTC is negative at low boron con-
dition (0 ppm), near-zero at normal boron condition (1000 ppm), and
For the G-S scheme, the fixed-point map can be simplified because positive in high boron condition (2000 ppm); that is the typical trend
the operators TH and FC are the functions of f(kþ1) which is the of MTC in Light Water Reactors (LWRs).
solution of NT. Therefore, the following fixed-point map can be With the generated cross-sections, the neutronics-T/H coupled
derived by eliminating the neutron flux f from the solution calculations are performed. The solution procedure consists of the
variables: nested iteration where the inner iteration is for the power method
to solve an eigenvalue problem of the neutronics calculation and
! 2    3ðkÞ
the outer iteration is for the G-S or Jacobi type FPI to achieve the
Tc
ðkþ1Þ
Tc
ðkÞ TH NT Tf ; Tc
¼ ggs ¼ 4     5 : (19) nonlinear solution of a coupled problem. For the outer iteration, the
Tf Tf FC Tc ; NT Tf ; Tc global tolerances are set as below:

ðkÞ
jðkÞ
jðk
1Þ
εpsi;pseudo ¼ 2
 5  10
6 (20)
jðkÞ 2
4. Convergence analyses
and
The derived 1-D simplified coupled system is solved by the
ðkÞ ðk
1Þ
Jacobi and G-S type FPI with or without applying the optimization keff
keff
ðkÞ
schemes (relaxation and the Anderson acceleration). Their εeig ¼ ðkÞ
 5  10
6 (21)
convergence behaviors are monitored for various feedback condi- keff
tions. First, the cases where the group constants generated in three
different boron concentrations are concerned to qualitatively verify where j is the fission source vector Ff in eq. (2) and the superscript
the 1-D coupled system and to observe the convergence behavior of k is the iteration notation of FPI. Similarly, the local tolerances for
FPI for practical feedback conditions. Then, the convergence be- the power iteration within the k-th FPI iteration are given as:
haviors are investigated for a thousand unique cases in an extensive
range of FTC and MTC. Finally, the convergence analysis is per-
ðlÞ
jkðlÞ
jkðl
1Þ
formed after implementing the xenon equilibrium model. εloc;psi;pseudo ¼ 2
 2  10
6 (22)
jðlÞ
k 2

4.1. Problem specification and

The problems for the convergence analyses have a single pin ðlÞ ðl
1Þ
keff ;k
keff ;k
ðlÞ
configuration with 3.81 m axial height. The size of each computa- εloc;eig ¼ ðlÞ
 1  10
6 (23)
tional mesh is 1 cm, which yields 381 axial meshes. Typical ge- keff ;k
ometry and boundary conditions of a PWR with Hot Full Power
(HFP) are applied: 15.513 MPa outlet pressure, 295  C inlet tem- where the superscript l is the iteration notation of the power
perature, 0.360 kg/s mass flow rate, 17.5 kW/m linear power den- method. The power profile histories during the G-S type FPI are
sity, rf ¼ 4.2 mm, and rco ¼ 4.8 mm. Constant thermal properties are illustrated in Fig. 4. The effect of the boron concentration on MTC
assigned as kf ¼ 5.0 W/(m$K), kc ¼ 16.0 W/(m$K), and appears by the top skewed power shape for the negative MTC
hw ¼ 36000 W/(m2$K). The zero-flux boundary condition is applied (0 ppm) and the bottom skewed power shape for the positive MTC
for the neutronics system. (2000 ppm).
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J. Lee and H.G. Joo Nuclear Engineering and Technology 54 (2022) 532e545

Table 2 the same plot, the convergence behavior of the Jacobi scheme be-
Algorithm of Anderson acceleration. comes very similar to that of the G-S scheme as a gradually
Given x(0) and m  1 . decreasing shape.
Set xð1Þ ¼ gðxð0Þ Þ.
for k ¼ 1,2, … do
Set mk ¼ min½m; k . 4.3. Problem with MTC and FTC variation
Compute gðxðkÞ Þ and let f ðkÞ ¼ gðxðkÞ Þ
xðkÞ .
Set FðkÞ ¼ ½f ðk
mk Þ ; …; f ðkÞ . To investigate the convergence behavior of FPI for neutronics-T/
ðkÞ ðkÞ T H coupled calculations in more general and broader feedback cases,
Determine aðkÞ ¼ ½a0 ; …; amk  which solves
8 it was necessary to establish many problems to have different MTCs
>
> min FðkÞ aðkÞ
>
< a¼½a0 ;…;amk T 2 and FTCs. However, generating numerous group constants from a
X
mk .
>
> lattice code for each case would be time-consuming and require too
>
: s:t: ai ¼ 1
i¼0 excessive effort. Therefore, a relation is derived to estimate a
Pmk Pmk
Set xðkþ1Þ ¼ ð1
bÞ aðkÞ xðk
mk þiÞ
i¼0 i
þb aðkÞ gðxðk
mk þiÞ Þ.
i¼0 i
reactivity coefficient from the change of reference group constants.
end for The reactivity change without the leakage effect is expressed as
below:

1 1 S S
vr ¼
¼ a0
a1 (26)
kinf;0 kinf;1 nSf 0 nSf 1

where subscript 0 is a reference state, and 1 is a perturbed state. It

can be rewritten as:

ðSa0 þ DSa ÞDnSf DSa

vr ¼
(27)
nSf 0 nSf 1 nSf 0

where

DnSf ¼ nSf 1
nSf 0 (28)

Fig. 3. Configuration of C0 assembly of OPR1000 used to generate group constants.
and

Fig. 5 demonstrates the convergence behaviors of the Jacobi and DSa ¼ Sa1
Sa0 : (29)
G-S type FPI in terms of the true error of fission source defined as
follows: Eliminating the second-order D and applying Taylor expansion can
yield:

j*
jðkÞ Sa0 DnSf DSa

ðkÞ
εpsi;true ¼ 2 vr z
(30)
(24) nSf 0 nSf 0 nSf 0
kj* k2

where the asterisk superscript denotes the true solution, which is
approximated by the solution obtained with very tight global tol-
erances (e.g., εpsi;pseudo  5  10
10 ). The figure implies two con-
clusions. First, the number of FPIs is increased when MTC is far from
zero regardless of its sign. This indicates that the stronger T/H
feedback makes the slower convergence rate of FPI, and it corre-
sponds to the poorer convergence rate of FPI for the steeper
gradient (or Jacobian) of the function g in eq. (17). Second, the
convergence rate of the Jacobi scheme is about 1.8 times slower
than that of G-S scheme. The poorer performance at the Jacobi
scheme is mainly caused by the oscillatory convergence behavior,
and it can be explained by Fig. 6. The figure draws the G-S and
Jacobi type FPI between two physics f and g. When a current so-
lution of a system is solely determined by previous solutions of the
other system, it can be expressed as below:
 
xðkÞ ¼ f yðk
1Þ
 :
yðkÞ ¼ g xðk
1Þ
In this system, the Jacobi scheme is equivalent to solving two in-
dependent G-S-style systems (yellow and purple line) that gives
the same solution. This can be alternatively demonstrated by
drawing fission source errors of the Jacobi scheme at each odd or
even FPI as shown in Fig. 5. When we collect and re-draw them in
which is a very similar parameter g in Refs. [17,18] to characterize
the feedback intensity. With the derived relation, we can readily
estimate how much the cross-sections should be modified (DSa ;
DnSf ) to have a specific reactivity change (vr) from the reference
stage (Sa0 ; nSf 0 ).
Now, a set of problems in a broad range of MTC and FTC is
constructed. The cross-sections at Tc ¼ 600 K, Tf ¼ 600 K, and
1000 ppm boron concentration of C0 assembly in section 4.2 are
used for the reference stage. The equidistant 33 reactivity co-
efficients for FTC and MTC are selected as below:
vr  pffiffiffiffi
qffiffiffiffiffi pcm= K ¼½
192;
180;/;
12;0;12;/;180;192for FTC
v Tf
vr
ðpcm=KÞ¼½
96;
90;/;
6;0;6;/;90;96for MTC
vTc
(31)
(25) that sufficiently covers the practical range of FTC and MTC. Thus,
1089 (33x33) problems with different FTCs and MTCs are config-
ured. Fig. 7 and Fig. 8 demonstrate how the power profile will be by
the FTC and MTC. The sign of MTC is closely related to the direction
of the power skewness as the contour map of the axial offset (Fig. 7)
shows. The peaking factor (Fz) becomes higher as FTC goes in the
positive direction or the magnitude of MTC is larger.
The constructed problem set is solved by the Jacobi and G-S type
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J. Lee and H.G. Joo Nuclear Engineering and Technology 54 (2022) 532e545

Table 3
Group constants generated by nTRACER with C0 assembly for various fuel temper- ncase
atures and boron concentrations with constant coolant temperature. r¼
1: (33)
nref
Boron conc. Tf Tc D (cm) Sa nSf k-inf Dr pffiffiffiffi
pffiffiffi ðpcm= K Þ
(ppm) (K) (K) (/cm) (/cm) D T Here, the reference case means the one before applying optimiza-
0 600 600 1.2440 0.0212 0.0291 1.37298 - tion techniques. From the comparison, it is figured that the under-
1200 600 1.2452 0.0213 0.0288 1.35277
107 relaxation can reduce the number of FPIs up to 40% for negative FTC
1000 600 600 1.2605 0.0216 0.0267 1.23340 -
cases where the power development during FPI is oscillatory.
1200 600 1.2617 0.0217 0.0264 1.21526
119
2000 600 600 1.2741 0.0220 0.0247 1.12287 - However, the number of FPIs for positive FTC cases are rather
1200 600 1.2752 0.0221 0.0245 1.10645
130 increased up to 50%. For those cases, over-relaxation is more
effective because their power profiles are steadily developed to-
ward the peak.
Table 4 On the other hand, when the under-relaxation is applied to the
Group constants generated by nTRACER with C0 assembly for various coolant Jacobi type FPI, the iteration numbers do not decrease much even
temperatures and boron concentrations with constant fuel temperature. for the negative FTC cases as demonstrated in Fig. 12. The reason
Boron conc. (ppm) Tc (K) Tc (K) D (cm) Sa (/cm) nSf (/cm) k-inf Dr can be explained as follows. According to Table 1, a fuel temperature
ðpcm=KÞ
DT of the next iteration ((kþ1)-th) with the relaxation scheme is
0 600 600 1.2440 0.0212 0.0291 1.37298 - determined by weighting two solutions between the current step
600 570 1.1686 0.0226 0.0314 1.38673
24 (*) and the previous step (k-th):
1000 600 600 1.2605 0.0216 0.0267 1.23340 -
600 570 1.1873 0.0232 0.0286 1.23104 5
ðkþ1Þ ðkÞ
2000 600 600 1.2741 0.0220 0.0247 1.12287 - Tf ¼ uTf* þ ð1
uÞTf : (34)
600 570 1.2023 0.0237 0.0263 1.11051 33

This implies close interconnectivity between the k-th and the

FPI and their number of iterations is drawn in Fig. 9 as the contour
map. The tendencies of the two schemes are similar as the number
of FPIs is increased when the perturbed states are far from the
origin which is equivalent to cases with the stronger T/H feedback.
However, when the numbers of iterations are compared between
the two schemes, the Jacobi type FPI requires more iteration than
the G-S type FPI. This is demonstrated in Fig. 10 as the contour map
with the ratio of iteration number of Jacobi scheme to G-S scheme
defined as:
njacobi
R¼ : (32)
nG
S
The range of R is from 1.40 to 2.25 and the average of R is 1.91. The
value of R higher than two implies that there is no computational
gain with the tandem approach by the Jacobi scheme, and those
cases appear in the strongly negative FTC and the high magnitude
of MTC.
From now on, the optimization schemes are applied to reduce
the number of FPIs. Firstly, the under-relaxation factor 0.9 is applied
to the G-S scheme and the results are presented in Fig. 11. The
change of the number of iterations from the original (or reference)
case is quantified by the relative factor defined as follows:
(kþ1)-th solution. However, as explained in section 4.2 with Fig. 6,
the (kþ1)-th solution of the Jacobi style FPI is more strongly
affected by the (k-1)-th solution rather than the k-th solution. Based
on this observation, the modified relaxation scheme is proposed for
the Jacobi scheme as below:
ðkþ1Þ ðk
1Þ
Tf ¼ uTf* þ ð1
uÞTf : (35)
With the modified under-relaxation, the iteration numbers of the
Jacobi scheme for the negative FTC cases can be reduced up to 40%
as shown in Fig. 13, which is a similar behavior in the G-S scheme.
Finally, the Anderson Acceleration (AA) is applied to reduce the
number of FPIs for both the Jacobi and the G-S scheme. The storage
depth of the Anderson acceleration (m in Table 2) is set to m ¼ 2
because the sensitivity study in Refs. [7,9] showed that it can be
effective enough compared to the higher storage depths. Fig. 14 and
Fig. 15 demonstrates that the Anderson acceleration substantially
decreases the iteration numbers for both the Jacobi and G-S
schemes in overall cases. Especially, the decrease of the iteration
number is remarkable up to 70% for strong feedback cases.
Fig. 16 is drawn to display the convergence behaviors in terms of
εpsi;true during the fixed-point iteration for a problem with a typical
MTC (
24 pcm/K) and FTC (
120 pcm/sqrt(K)) in PWRs. Without
the optimization techniques, the G-S type FPI is converged 1.8 times

Fig. 4. Development of power profile during G-S style FPI by different boron concentrations.

537
J. Lee and H.G. Joo
Fig. 5. Behavior of fission source error during FPI by different boron concentrations.
Fig. 6. Schematic drawing of solution procedure for G-S and Jacobi type FPI with two
sub-systems.
faster than the Jacobi type FPI. The under-relaxation for the Jacobi
scheme is more effective with the modified one. The Anderson
acceleration can significantly decrease the number of FPIs by 40%
for both the Jacobi and the G-S schemes.
4.4. Problem with xenon equilibrium model
The xenon equilibrium model is frequently used in neutronics
codes to predict a core state at Beginning of Cycle (BOC) after the
xenon buildup. Besides the T/H feedback, the equilibrium xenon is
also an important source of feedback during multiphysics core
calculations [14]. In this section, we demonstrate that the xenon
equilibrium model can cause numerical instability during FPI of T/H
feedback calculations and explain the reason. Afterward, the
convergence analysis is performed with the optimization schemes.
The governing equation of the xenon equilibrium model is
derived from the balance equation of I-135 and Xe-135:
dNI
¼
lI NI þ gI Sf f
dt
dNXe  
¼
lXe þ sXe
a f NXe þ lI NI þ gXe Sf f
dt
where N is the number density of an isotope, g is the fission yield of
an isotope, l is the decay constant, and sXe
a is the microscopic ab-
sorption cross-section of xenon. By eliminating time derivative
terms, the number density of xenon in the equilibrium state can be
formulated as below:
Nuclear Engineering and Technology 54 (2022) 532e545
ðgI þ gXe ÞSf f
NXe ðfÞ ¼ ; (38)
lXe þ sXe
a f
so it becomes the function of the neutron flux. This is used to up-
date the absorption cross-section for the neutronics calculation as
follows:
XeEq
Sa ¼ Sa þ sXe
a NXe (39)
where Sa and SXeEq
a are the macro cross-sections before (eq. (3))
and after considering the xenon buildup respectively. Then, the
procedure of FPI with the xenon equilibrium model can be written
as in Table 5. Compared to the original procedure in Table 1, the
routine to calculate the xenon number density is added and the
cross-section update by the xenon number density is considered.
In the following, two convergence analyses for the xenon
equilibrium calculation are presented; one is with a problem set of
various MTCs and FTCs which is the same in section 4.3 and the
other is with various fuel enrichments.
4.4.1. Convergence analysis with MTC and FTC variation
The convergence analysis for the xenon equilibrium problems is
performed for the same testbed in section 4.3 that comprises 1089
problems with different MTCs and FTCs based on the C0 assembly.
First, the problems are solved by the Jacobi and the G-S type FPI.
The results are given in Fig. 17 and Fig. 18 by illustrating the itera-
tion numbers and their relative changes (r as defined in eq. (33))
from the calculations without the xenon equilibrium model. In the
G-S type FPI, the number of iterations is decreased at the positive
FTC region, while it is significantly increased at the negative FTC
points by more than 100%. At a certain level of FTC (white points in
Fig. 17), the solution of the G-S type FPI only oscillates and does not
converge as shown in Fig. 19. On the other hand, in the Jacobi type
FPI, instability or oscillation is not observed, but the remarkable
increases of iteration appear near the strongly positive FTC region.
The reason for the above FPI changes can be explained by the
(36) reactivity insertion through the xenon buildup. In the xenon
equilibrium calculation, the total reactivity change between itera-
tions is a sum of the reactivity change by fuel, coolant, and xenon:
(37) Drtotal ¼ Drfuel þ Drcoolant þ DrXe: (40)
Let us consider an example of the G-S type FPI with a negative FTC
case first. Within the k-th iteration, the solutions of fuel tempera-
ture and xenon number density are obtained by the newly updated
flux distribution (f(kþ1)) as described in Table 5, so their profiles are
developed in the same tendency as that of the neutron flux; where
538
J. Lee and H.G. Joo Nuclear Engineering and Technology 54 (2022) 532e545

Fig. 7. Contour map of axial offset for various MTCs and FTCs.

the neutron flux is high, the fuel temperature and xenon number
density are high. In addition, both feedbacks of the fuel tempera-
ture and the xenon number density are negative. As a result, the
total reactivity of the system is amplified, and the system becomes
vulnerable to oscillation as shown in Fig. 20. On the other hand, for
the Jacobi type FPI with a negative FTC, the xenon number density
is calculated with f(kþ1) while the fuel temperature is obtained with
f(k). Because of the oscillatory development of f, the skewness of
f(k) and f(kþ1) is opposite, e.g., top-skewed f(k) and bottom-skewed
f(kþ1). Thus, the signs of Drfuel and DrXe can be opposite, and this
results in a reduced Drtotal (see Fig. 21) that leads to a faster
convergence. The convergence behavior for the positive FTC cases
can be explained in the same way, but with positive reactivity from
fuel temperature and negative reactivity from xenon. Fig. 9. The number of FPIs of G-S (top) and Jacobi (bottm) scheme for various MTCs
and FTCs.
To improve the convergence behavior, the under-relaxation
with u ¼ 0.7 and the Anderson acceleration are applied. The nu-
merical result is similar to that in section 4.3. As shown in Fig. 22,
FTCs. In Fig. 25 and Fig. 26, the results of the Anderson acceleration
the under-relaxation can reduce the number of FPIs for the G-S
for Jacobi and G-S type FPI are illustrated. The number of iterations
scheme and resolve the numerical instability at the strong negative
is remarkably reduced for both schemes. For example, the reduc-
FTC region. However, simultaneously, it considerably increases the
tion in the Jacobi scheme is up to 81%. Through this comparison, it is
number of FPIs at the positive FTC region up to 160%. Fig. 23 dis-
demonstrated that the Anderson acceleration is also very effective
plays the results of Jacobi type FPI after applying the under-
for the xenon equilibrium calculation.
relaxation. The number of Jacobi iterations is decreased in most
cases and the largest reduction is 66%. In the xenon equilibrium
4.4.2. Convergence analysis with various fuel enrichments
calculation, the modified relaxation for the Jacobi scheme was not
In a steady-state PWR, the reactivity coefficients of fuel tem-
effective compared to the original relaxation scheme as demon-
perature and coolant temperature are placed at about
3 pcm/K
strated in Fig. 24. Nonetheless, its relative changes of the iteration
(or
120 pcm/sqrt(K)) and
30 pcm/K respectively and those
number (r) become to have a similar tendency to that of the G-S
magnitudes are not high enough to induce the numerical instability
type FPI; decrease at the negative FTCs and increase at the positive
during the fixed-point iteration. However, in the xenon equilibrium

Fig. 8. Contour map of axial power peaking factor for various MTCs and FTCs. Fig. 10. Ratio of FPIs of Jacobi to G-S scheme for various MTCs and FTCs.

539
J. Lee and H.G. Joo Nuclear Engineering and Technology 54 (2022) 532e545

Fig. 11. Contour map of the number of G-S type FPIs with under-relaxation (w ¼ 0.9) and its relative change from reference.

Fig. 12. Contour map of the number of Jacobi type FPIs with under-relaxation (w ¼ 0.9) and its relative change from reference.

Fig. 13. Contour map of the number of Jacobi type FPIs with modified under-relaxation (w ¼ 0.9) and its relative change from reference.

calculation, it turned out that the oscillatory instability can occur According to eq. (30), the reactivity change is negatively propor-
depending on the fuel enrichment even though the reactivity co- tional to DSa, and the DSa of xenon (DSXea ) between two adjacent
efficients rely on the typical values of PWRs. Table 6 shows the iterations is formulated as below:
values of parameters for the xenon equilibrium calculation (eq.
(38)) in fuel assemblies (FAs) with different enrichments, which     
ðkÞ
was estimated by the nTRACER code. The decay constant and fission DSXe
a ¼ sa NXe f
Xe

NXe fðk
1Þ
(41)
yield of Xe-135 and I-135 are almost the same regardless of the ðgI þ gXe ÞsXe
a Sf f
ðkÞ ðgI þ gXe ÞsXe
a Sf f
ðk
1Þ
enrichment while sXe a is considerably changed as a higher value for
¼

lXe þ sXe
a f
ðkÞ lXe þ sXe
a f
ðk
1Þ
a lower enrichment. This is because, in low enrichments, the
neutron flux in the thermal region is high, so the effective ab- When proper values are inserted into the parameters in the above
sorption cross-section of xenon becomes large. In other words, sXe a
equation, DSXe
a generally increases as sa decreases. Consequently,
Xe
decreases as the fuel enrichment increases.
the negative reactivity insertion by xenon becomes stronger for
The variation of sXe
a influences the reactivity change as follows.
highly enriched problems. This becomes a major source of
540
J. Lee and H.G. Joo Nuclear Engineering and Technology 54 (2022) 532e545

Fig. 14. Contour map of the number of G-S type FPIs with AA(2) and its relative change from reference.

Fig. 15. Contour map of the number of Jacobi type FPIs with AA(2) and its relative change from reference.

instability for the G-S type FPI where the feedbacks by fuel tem-
perature and xenon work in the same direction.
In Table 7, the numbers of iterations with G-S and Jacobi
schemes for various fuel enrichments are presented. The group
constants and reactivity coefficients of each fuel assembly are ob-
tained from the lattice calculation by nTRACER under 1000 ppm
boron concentration. u ¼ 1.0 indicates the cases without applying
the optimization schemes. In the G-S scheme, the number of
iterations is significantly increased when the xenon equilibrium
calculation is included. This becomes more severe as the enrich-
ment increases and even with D0 assembly, the calculation does
not converge due to the oscillatory instability as seen in Fig. 19. On
the other hand, in the Jacobi scheme, instability was not observed.
Applying the optimization schemes, either the under-relaxation or
the Anderson acceleration, can improve the convergence rate and
resolve the instability problem. However, the performance of the
Anderson acceleration is better than that of the under-relaxation
because the Anderson acceleration consistently and efficiently re-
duces the number of iterations, whereas the performance of the
under-relaxation is problem-dependent.

Table 5
FPI and relaxation scheme for 1-D simplified coupled system with xenon equilib-
rium model.

Given f0 , T0c , T0f .

for k ¼ 0, 1, … do
ðkÞ ðkÞ ðkÞ
Update SðTf ; Tc ; NXe Þ.
ðkÞ ðkÞ
Solve fðkþ1Þ ¼ NTðΤf ; Τc Þ.
ðkþ1Þ ðgI þ gXe ÞSf fðkþ1Þ
Solve NXe ¼ .
lXe þ sXe
a f
ðkþ1Þ

ðkþ1Þ k for Jacobi

Solve Tc ¼ THðfðmÞ Þ; m ¼
k þ 1 for G
S
ðkþ1Þ k for Jacobi
Solve T*f ¼ FCðfðmÞ ; Tc Þ; m ¼ .
k þ 1 for G
S
ðkþ1Þ ðkÞ
Set Tf ¼ uT*f þ ð1
uÞTf .
Fig. 16. Fission source
pffiffiffiffi errors by FPIs with typical temperature coefficients
(FTC ¼
120pcm= K and MTC ¼
24pcm=K). end for

541
J. Lee and H.G. Joo
Fig. 17. The number of G-S type FPI with Xe Eq. model and its relative change from G-S scheme without Xe Eq. model.
Fig. 18. The number of Jacobi type FPI with Xe Eq. model and its relative change from Jacobi scheme without Xe Eq. model.
5. Summary and conclusions
The convergence analysis on neutronics-T/H coupled calcula-
tions was carried out to investigate the performance of FPI-based
nonlinear methods. The 1-D simplified coupled system was
derived to provide a testbed for the convergence analysis. The
Jacobi and G-S type FPI were used to solve the nonlinear system,
and the relaxation scheme and the Anderson acceleration were
Fig. 19. Diverged power in oscillatory behavior for highly negative FTC case with Xe Eq.
model.
542
Nuclear Engineering and Technology 54 (2022) 532e545
applied to improve the convergence rate of both FPIs. After solving
a set of problems consisting of a thousand different MTCs and FTCs,
we compared the number of iterations and the fission source error
between solution schemes. We also examined the effect of the
xenon equilibrium model which induced instability. From those
numerical investigations, the following conclusions are drawn.
 For both Jacobi and G-S type FPI, the convergence behavior
becomes poorer when the feedback is stronger regardless of its
sign. This can correspond to the poorer convergence of FPI in a
scalar function when its absolute gradient is steeper.
 The number of Jacobi type FPIs is generally larger than that of
the G-S scheme about 1.8 times for the practical T/H feedback
condition and it can be even larger than twice in certain cases.
Because of this poor convergence rate of Jacobi type FPI, the
benefit of solving systems in tandem becomes weaken. The
reason for the slow convergence in Jacobi type FPI is that the
solution at the k-th iteration is influenced by the solution of the
(k-2)-th step, not the (k-1)-th step. This characteristic is
important because it should be considered when the relaxation
scheme is applied to the Jacobi type FPI.
 The numerical instability with the oscillatory power develop-
ment can occur by strongly negative feedback by fuel. Moreover,
the xenon buildup can be another source of instability because
of its strong negative reactivity. This instability, however, can be
only observed in the G-S type FPI because the profiles of xenon
number density and fuel temperature are changed in the same
direction in the G-S scheme while they are opposite in the Jacobi
scheme. It is also figured out that the G-S type FPI is more
J. Lee and H.G. Joo Nuclear Engineering and Technology 54 (2022) 532e545

pffiffiffiffi
Fig. 20. Local reactivity changes during G-S type FPI with Xe Eq. model for negative FTC problem (FTC ¼
120pcm= K and MTC ¼
12pcm=K).

pffiffiffiffi
Fig. 21. Local reactivity changes during Jacobi type FPI with Xe Eq. model for negative FTC problem (FTC ¼
120pcm= K and MTC ¼
12pcm=K).

Fig. 22. The number of G-S type FPIs for Xe Eq. with under-relaxation (w ¼ 0.7) and its relative change from result without under-relaxation.

Fig. 23. The number of Jacobi type FPIs for Xe Eq. with under-relaxation (w ¼ 0.7) and its relative change from result without under-relaxation.
543
J. Lee and H.G. Joo Nuclear Engineering and Technology 54 (2022) 532e545

Fig. 24. The number of Jacobi type FPIs for Xe Eq. with modified under-relaxation (w ¼ 0.7) and its relative change from result without under-relaxation.

Fig. 25. The number of G-S type FPIs for Xe Eq. with AA-2 and its relative change from reference without Anderson acceleration.

Fig. 26. The number of Jacobi type FPIs for Xe Eq. with AA-2 and its relative change from result without Anderson acceleration.

vulnerable to xenon-induced instability for more highly
enriched problems.
 Compared to the conventional relaxation scheme, the Anderson
acceleration shows excellent performance by reducing the
iteration number of both G-S and Jacobi schemes for various
feedback conditions. The under-relaxation could manage to
reduce the number of FPIs to a certain level for negative FTC
problems which are our main interests, but it does not work for
problems having positive FTC. In addition, heuristic scanning is
inevitable to find the optimum value of the relaxation factor
because it is problem-dependent. On the other hand, we can
expect the optimum performance of FPI with the Anderson ac-
celeration because its weighting factor is calculated by the
method of Least Squares.
Because this convergence analysis was only performed with the 1-
D simplified coupled system, it is necessary to investigate the per-
formance of the Anderson acceleration in a high-fidelity neutronics-
T/H coupled code. Especially, investigating the convergence behavior
in transient simulations will be helpful to expand this study.

544
J. Lee and H.G. Joo Nuclear Engineering and Technology 54 (2022) 532e545

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