Novel Monte Carlo methods for proton transport simulations in the heterogeneous CPU-GPU environment
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Authors
Zieb, Kristofer
Issue Date
2018-08
Type
Electronic thesis
Thesis
Thesis
Language
ENG
Keywords
Nuclear engineering and science
Alternative Title
Abstract
A single event proton transport method has been developed using a cross section based, analog transport model. Cross section models were selected to achieve a balance of performance and accuracy for this study. Each method has been implemented in C++ and compared on the Snow HPC system at Los Alamos National Laboratory as well as on the Radiation Measurement and Dosimetry Group’s (RRMDG) graphics processing unit (GPU) cluster at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The particular models being examined were verified and validated while restricted to the 1 MeV to 1 GeV energy regime, sufficient for proton radiography applications. Using an Nvidia K40c GPU, the single-event proton transport code was able to achieve 105 times speedup relative to serial MCNP6.2 simulations, equivalent to a 64 noderun on the Snow HPC machine with the MCNP6.2 code. The code developed was also able to successfully capture particle behavior from the Blur Test Object Experiment performed at Los Alamos National Laboratory proton radiography facility including the characteristic blurring and the radiographic phenomenon referred to as limbing. The single-event code is proven to be a powerful simulation tool well adapted to modern hardware, and capable of providing fast simulation results over small spatial scales to both desktop and HPC users.
Description
August 2018
School of Engineering
School of Engineering
Full Citation
Publisher
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY