Credit Hours:3-0-3
Prerequisites:Graduate standing in engineering or a related discipline
Catalog Description:Neutral and charged particle transport. Fluid mass, energy, and momentum transport. Models used in nuclear radiation transport, fluid hydrodynamics, radiative and plasma transport.
Textbooks:Elmer E. Lewis, Warren F. Miller, Computational Methods of Neutron Transport, American Nuclear Society, 1990.
Instructors:W. M. Stacey, Farzad Rahnema
Goals:This course is intended to introduce the student to the concepts and methods of transport theory needed for the study of reactor physics, radiation transport, fluid hydrodynamics, plasma physics, and related subjects.
Topics:
  1. Transport Formalism
    • general transport formalism and examples from neutron transport,
    • radiative transport
    • neutral gas transport
    • ionized gas transport
    • plasma transport
    • electron transport
  2. Neutral Particle Integral Transport
    • purely absorbing medium
    • uniform infinite medium w/isotropic scattering
    • semi-infinite medium w/plane source
    • finite slab w/isotropic scattering
    • transmission and escape probabilities
    • collision probabilities
    • response matrix.
  3. Neutral Particle Collision Operators
    • kinematics of isotropic CM scattering
    • age approximation, continuous slowing down theory
    • energy transfer from Maxwellian gas
    • energy transfer from bound atoms
    • Boltzman gas kinetic collision operator
  4. Charged Particle Collision Operators
    • Coulomb collision kinematics
    • Fokker-Planck collision operator
    • Krook collision operators
  5. Spherical Harmonics & Discrete Ordinates Methods
    • derivation of PN equations and diffusion theory
    • derivation of double-PN equations
    • derivation of SN equations
    • equivalence of SN and PN equations
    • multidimensional extensions
  6. Diffusion Theory
    • infinite medium solutions
    • finite medium solutions
    • albedo
    • examples from neutron
    • neutral atom transport
  7. Hydrodynamics
    • properties of Boltzman collision operator
    • linearized Boltzman equation for gas kinetics
    • derivation of hydrodynamics equations and transport coefficients
    • Chapman-Enskog derivation of Navier-Stokes
    • Fourier equations
  8. Plasma Fluid Transport Theory
    • derivation of multifluid plasma hydrodynamics equations
    • derivation of one-fluid equations and magnetohydrodynamic equations
    • derivation of multifluid plasma transport equations