Interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin method for a homogenized diffusion equation in reactor simulations

Paper in proceeding, 2015

Full core reactor simulations are generally based on a (at least) two-scales process, the first one consisting of a fine-mesh lattice calculation, and after an homogenization process the homogenized data are used for coarse-mesh full core reactor calculation. The discontinuity factors can be considered as part of these homogenized data, widely used to minimize the error due to spatial homogenization of the cross sections. Thus, the implementation of the discontinuity factors in Finite Element Methods is necessary in order to use these methods for homogenized core calculations. Here we proposed a variation of an Interior Penalty Discontinuous Galerkin Finite Element method to allow forcing the discontinuity of the neutron flux determined by the discontinuity factors. The proposed method is tested solving different one-dimensional benchmark problems, showing that the discontinuity factors technique can be successfully introduced in the Interior Penalty Discontinuous Galerkin Finite Element Method.