A Method for Determination of Spatial Stability

Spatial variations constitute one of the major difficulties in power reactor kinetics. A method is demonstrated in which use is made of Liapunov’s second method combined with a variational principle to give a sufficient criterion. For this method it is obvious that nonlinear terms can be neglected, whereas methods involving series expansions require proof of uniform convergence. Practical application by hand calculation to three-dimensional inhomogeneous reactor models is possible.