The Application of the Symmetric SOR and the Symmetric SIP Methods for the Numerical Solution of the Neutron Diffusion Equation

The symmetric successive overrelaxation (SSOR) method and the symmetric strongly implicit procedure (SSIP) method are applied to a number of two-dimensional elliptic partial differential equations typical of those encountered in reactor engineering. The SSIP method is then incorporated in a program for multigroup diffusion calculation to compute the inner iterations. The results of applying the program to the solution of several reactor configurations are compared with the results from a version of the PDQ code. For cell problems (with Neumann boundary condition), the new methods outperform the SOR method.