Application of polynomial chaos expansion in inverse transport problems with neutron multiplication measurements and multiple unknowns - 25623

The polynomial chaos expansion technique is used to build surrogate models of the dependences of gamma-ray fluxes and neutron multiplication to unknown physical parameters in radiological source/shield systems. These surrogate models are used with the Differential Evolution Adaptive Metropolis (DREAM), a method to solve and quantify uncertainty in inverse transport problems. Measured data in the inverse problems includes both passive gamma rays and neutron multiplication. The polynomial chaos expansion approach is shown to increase the speed of DREAM by factors of greater than 60 while not degrading the accuracy of the solution. (authors)