Skills and Applications

The Transport Methods Group develops numerical solution techniques for solving neutron, photon, and charged particle radiation transport problems. The fundamental skills of the group are
outlined below:

Deterministic Solutions to the Boltzmann Transport Equation

1D, 2D, and 3D Solution Techniques

Structured Grids
Unstructured Grids
First and Second Order Formulations

Angular Discretizations

Discrete Ordinates (Sn)
Simplified Spherical Harmonics (SPn)
Spherical Harmonics (Pn)

Spatial Discretizations

Finite Difference
Arbitray Finite Elements
Nodal Methods
Exponential Methods

Energy Discretizations

Multi-group
Discontinuous Treatments for the Continuous-
Slowing-Down Operator

Convergence Acceleration Techniques

Diffusion Synthetic Acceleration (DSA)
Angular Multi-grid Acceleration
Multi-Frequency Grey Acceleration (MFG)
Neutron Up-scatter Source Acceleration
Fission Source Acceleration

General Numerical Analysis
Programming for Parallel Architectures
Computational Transport Methods Development for
- Relativistic Electrons and Ions
- Neutrons
- X-Rays and Gamma Rays
- Infrared Radiative Heat Transfer
Automatic Biasing of Monte Carlo Calculations via Deterministic Solutions
Modern Computational Science and Software Engineering Techniques

Applications

The techniques and algorithms developed by the Transport Methods Group may be applied in a wide variety of fields. A few representative examples are listed below.

Satellite Shielding
Oil Well Logging
Fire Modeling
Combustion Chamber Analysis
Steel Furnace Design and Performance Modeling
Design of High Performance Lighting
Nuclear Reactor Design and Analysis
Radiation Protection and Shielding
Criticality Safety
Inertial Confinement Fusion
Medical Therapy and Imaging
Medical Physics
Astrophysical Calculations
Atmospheric/Climate Modeling