A hybrid Monte Carlo, discontinuous Galerkin method for linear kinetic transport equations

Abstract

We present a hybrid method for time-dependent particle transport problems that combines Monte Carlo (MC) estimation with deterministic solutions based on discrete ordinates. For spatial discretizations, the MC algorithm computes a piecewise constant solution and the discrete ordinates use bilinear discontinuous finite elements. From the hybridization of the problem, the resulting problem solved by Monte Carlo is scattering free, resulting in a simple, efficient solution procedure. Between time steps, we use a projection approach to “relabel” collided particles as uncollided particles. From a series of standard 2-D Cartesian test problems we observe that our hybrid method has improved accuracy and reduction in computational complexity of approximately an order of magnitude relative to standard discrete ordinates solutions.