How can I treat temperature in an input file?

User Support
1

I tried to find a temperature section in the ‘Writing XML Input Files’ of the OpenMC User’s Guide.
However, I’ve not found so far.
I’ve expected that maybe the <energy_grid> element deals with temperature.
Is it right? If yes, how can I change temperature?
‘Default:union’ is the only explanation about the <energy_grid>.

Thanks,
Chidong

2

Hello Chidong,

You are right that there are is no discussion about the temperature of a material in the OpenMC manual; currently the only way to set the temperature is to reference different cross-section data sets (with the <default_xs> element in materials.xml http://mit-crpg.github.io/openmc/usersguide/input.html#default-xs-element) and to have consistent number densities. Work is ongoing to incorporate more advanced temperature treatments (and user interaction with these treatments) as discussed here: https://github.com/mit-crpg/openmc/issues/129

Finally, the <energy_grid> element does not affect the temperature of a model; instead it, to a high-level, just changes how the cross-section arrays are allocated and referenced in the computer’s RAM.

Hope this helps,
Adam