7. Execution Settings¶

Once you have created the materials and geometry for your simulation, the last step to have a complete model is to specify execution settings through the openmc.Settings class. At a minimum, you need to specify a source distribution and how many particles to run. Many other execution settings can be set using the openmc.Settings object, but they are generally optional.

7.1. Run Modes¶

The Settings.run_mode attribute controls what run mode is used when openmc is executed. There are five different run modes that can be specified:

‘eigenvalue’: Runs a \(k\) eigenvalue simulation. See Eigenvalue Calculations for a full description of eigenvalue calculations. In this mode, the Settings.source specifies a starting source that is only used for the first fission generation.
‘fixed source’: Runs a fixed-source calculation with a specified external source, specified in the Settings.source attribute.
‘volume’: Runs a stochastic volume calculation.
‘plot’: Generates slice or voxel plots (see Geometry Visualization).
‘particle restart’: Simulate a single source particle using a particle restart file.

So, for example, to specify that OpenMC should be run in fixed source mode, you would need to instantiate a openmc.Settings object and assign the Settings.run_mode attribute:

settings = openmc.Settings()
settings.run_mode = 'fixed source'

If you don’t specify a run mode, the default run mode is ‘eigenvalue’.

7.2. Number of Particles¶

For a fixed source simulation, the total number of source particle histories simulated is broken up into a number of batches, each corresponding to a realization of the tally random variables. Thus, you need to specify both the number of batches (Settings.batches) as well as the number of particles per batch (Settings.particles).

For a \(k\) eigenvalue simulation, particles are grouped into fission generations, as described in Eigenvalue Calculations. Successive fission generations can be combined into a batch for statistical purposes. By default, a batch will consist of only a single fission generation, but this can be changed with the Settings.generations_per_batch attribute. For problems with a high dominance ratio, using multiple generations per batch can help reduce underprediction of variance, thereby leading to more accurate confidence intervals. Tallies should not be scored to until the source distribution converges, as described in Method of Successive Generations, which may take many generations. To specify the number of batches that should be discarded before tallies begin to accumulate, use the Settings.inactive attribute.

The following example shows how one would simulate 10000 particles per generation, using 10 generations per batch, 150 total batches, and discarding 5 batches. Thus, a total of 145 active batches (or 1450 generations) will be used for accumulating tallies.

settings.particles = 10000
settings.generations_per_batch = 10
settings.batches = 150
settings.inactive = 5

7.3. External Source Distributions¶

External source distributions can be specified through the Settings.source attribute. If you have a single external source, you can create an instance of openmc.Source and use it to set the Settings.source attribute. If you have multiple external sources with varying source strengths, Settings.source should be set to a list of openmc.Source objects.

The openmc.Source class has three main attributes that one can set: Source.space, which defines the spatial distribution, Source.angle, which defines the angular distribution, and Source.energy, which defines the energy distribution.

The spatial distribution can be set equal to a sub-class of openmc.stats.Spatial; common choices are openmc.stats.Point or openmc.stats.Box. To independently specify distributions in the \(x\), \(y\), and \(z\) coordinates, you can use openmc.stats.CartesianIndependent.

The angular distribution can be set equal to a sub-class of openmc.stats.UnitSphere such as openmc.stats.Isotropic, openmc.stats.Monodirectional, or openmc.stats.PolarAzimuthal. By default, if no angular distribution is specified, an isotropic angular distribution is used.

The energy distribution can be set equal to any univariate probability distribution. This could be a probability mass function (openmc.stats.Discrete), a Watt fission spectrum (openmc.stats.Watt), or a tabular distribution (openmc.stats.Tabular). By default, if no energy distribution is specified, a Watt fission spectrum with \(a\) = 0.988 MeV and \(b\) = 2.249 MeV ^-1 is used.

As an example, to create an isotropic, 10 MeV monoenergetic source uniformly distributed over a cube centered at the origin with an edge length of 10 cm, one would run:

source = openmc.Source()
source.space = openmc.stats.Box((-5, -5, -5), (5, 5, 5))
source.angle = openmc.stats.Isotropic()
source.energy = openmc.stats.Discrete([10.0e6], [1.0])
settings.source = source

The openmc.Source class also has a Source.strength attribute that indicates the relative strength of a source distribution if multiple are used. For example, to create two sources, one that should be sampled 70% of the time and another that should be sampled 30% of the time:

src1 = openmc.Source()
src1.strength = 0.7
...

src2 = openmc.Source()
src2.strength = 0.3
...

settings.source = [src1, src2]

Finally, the Source.particle attribute can be used to indicate the source should be composed of particles other than neutrons. For example, the following would generate a photon source:

source = openmc.Source()
source.particle = 'photon'
...

settings.source = source

For a full list of all classes related to statistical distributions, see openmc.stats – Statistics.

7.4. Shannon Entropy¶

To assess convergence of the source distribution, the scalar Shannon entropy metric is often used in Monte Carlo codes. OpenMC also allows you to calculate Shannon entropy at each generation over a specified mesh, created using the openmc.Mesh class. After instantiating a Mesh, you need to specify the lower-left coordinates of the mesh (Mesh.lower_left), the number of mesh cells in each direction (Mesh.dimension) and either the upper-right coordinates of the mesh (Mesh.upper_right) or the width of each mesh cell (Mesh.width). Once you have a mesh, simply assign it to the Settings.entropy_mesh attribute.

entropy_mesh = openmc.Mesh()
entropy_mesh.lower_left = (-50, -50, -25)
entropy_mesh.upper_right = (50, 50, 25)
entropy_mesh.dimension = (8, 8, 8)

settings.entropy_mesh = entropy_mesh

If you’re unsure of what bounds to use for the entropy mesh, you can try getting a bounding box for the entire geometry using the Geometry.bounding_box property:

geom = openmc.Geometry()
...
m = openmc.Mesh()
m.lower_left, m.upper_right = geom.bounding_box
m.dimension = (8, 8, 8)

settings.entropy_mesh = m

7.5. Photon Transport¶

In addition to neutrons, OpenMC is also capable of simulating the passage of photons through matter. This allows the modeling of photon production from neutrons as well as pure photon calculations. The Settings.photon_transport attribute can be used to enable photon transport:

settings.photon_transport = True

The way in which OpenMC handles secondary charged particles can be specified with the Settings.electron_treatment attribute. By default, the thick-target bremsstrahlung (TTB) approximation is used to generate bremsstrahlung radiation emitted by electrons and positrons created in photon interactions. To neglect secondary bremsstrahlung photons and instead deposit all energy from electrons locally, the local energy deposition option can be selected:

settings.electron_treatment = 'led'

Note

Some features related to photon transport are not currently implemented, including:

Tallying photon energy deposition.

Generating a photon source from a neutron calculation that can be used for a later fixed source photon calculation.

Photoneutron reactions.

7.6. Generation of Output Files¶

A number of attributes of the openmc.Settings class can be used to control what files are output and how often. First, there is the Settings.output attribute which takes a dictionary having keys ‘summary’, ‘tallies’, and ‘path’. The first two keys controls whether a summary.h5 and tallies.out file are written, respectively (see Viewing and Analyzing Results for a description of those files). By default, output files are written to the current working directory; this can be changed by setting the ‘path’ key. For example, if you want to disable the tallies.out file and write the summary.h5 to a directory called ‘results’, you’d specify the Settings.output dictionary as:

settings.output = {
    'tallies': False,
    'path': 'results'
}

Generation of statepoint and source files is handled separately through the Settings.statepoint and Settings.sourcepoint attributes. Both of those attributes expect dictionaries and have a ‘batches’ key which indicates at which batches statepoints and source files should be written. Note that by default, the source is written as part of the statepoint file; this behavior can be changed by the ‘separate’ and ‘write’ keys of the Settings.sourcepoint dictionary, the first of which indicates whether the source should be written to a separate file and the second of which indicates whether the source should be written at all.

As an example, to write a statepoint file every five batches:

settings.batches = n
settings.statepoint = {'batches': range(5, n + 5, 5)}