Precise 3D reactor core calculation using Spherical Harmonics and Discontinuous Galerkin Finite Element Methods

International audienceWe study the use of PN method in angle and Discontinuous Galerkin in space to solve 3D neutron transport problem. PN method consists in developing the angular flux on truncated spherical harmonics basis. In this paper, we couple this method with the discontinuous finite elements in space to obtain a complete discretisation of the multigroup neutron transport equation. To investigate its precision, the method was applied to Takeda and C5G7 benchmark problems. These calculations point out that the proposed PN-DG method is capable of producing accurate solutions in small computational time, and that it is able to handle complex 3D geometries