Cell homogenization methods for pin-by-pin core calculations tested in slab geometry

In this paper, performances of spatial homogenization methods for fuel or non-fuel cells are compared in slab geometry in order to facilitate pin-by-pin core calculations. Since the spatial homogenization methods were mainly developed for fuel assemblies, systematic study of their performance for the cell-level homogenization has not been carried out. Importance of cell-level homogenization is recently increasing since the pin-by-pin mesh core calculation in actual three-dimensional geometry, which is less approximate approach than current advanced nodal method, is getting feasible. Four homogenization methods were investigated in this paper; the flux-volume weighting, the generalized equivalence theory, the superhomogenization (SPH) method and the nonlinear iteration method. The last one, the nonlinear iteration method, was tested as the homogenization method for the first time. The calculations were carried out in simplified colorset assembly configurations of PWR, which are simulated by slab geometries, and homogenization performances were evaluated through comparison with the reference cell-heterogeneous calculations. The calculation results revealed that the generalized equivalence theory showed best performance. Though the nonlinear iteration method can significantly reduce homogenization error, its performance was not as good as that of the generalized equivalence theory. Through comparison of the results obtained by the generalized equivalence theory and the superhomogenization method, important byproduct was obtained; deficiency of the current superhomogenization method, which could be improved by incorporating the “cell-level discontinuity factor between assemblies”, was clarified.