Some results on the neutron transport and the coupling of equations

Neutron transport in nuclear reactors is well modeled by the linear Boltzmann transport equation. Its resolution is relatively easy but very expensive. To achieve whole core calculations, one has to consider simpler models, such as diffusion or homogeneous transport equations. However, the solutions may become inaccurate in particular situations (as accidents for instance). That is the reason why we wish to solve the equations on small area accurately and more coarsely on the remaining part of the core. It is than necessary to introduce some links between different discretizations or modelizations. In this note, we give some results on the coupling of different discretizations of all degrees of freedom of the integral-differential neutron transport equation (two degrees for the angular variable, on for the energy component, and two or three degrees for spatial position respectively in 2D (cylindrical symmetry) and 3D). Two chapters are devoted to the coupling of discrete ordinates methods (for angular discretization). The first one is theoretical and shows the well posing of the coupled problem, whereas the second one deals with numerical applications of practical interest (the results have been obtained from the neutron transport code developed at the R and D, which has been modified for introducing the coupling). Next, we present the nodal scheme RTN0, used for the spatial discretization. We show well posing results for the non-coupled and the coupled problems. At the end, we deal with the coupling of energy discretizations for the multigroup equations obtained by homogenization. Some theoretical results of the discretization of the velocity variable (well-posing of problems), which do not deal directly with the purposes of coupling, are presented in the annexes. (author)