Validation and Verification of MCNP6 Against High-Energy Experimental Data and Calculations by Other Codes. III. The MPI Testing Primer

Abstract

This primer presents a set of Validation and Verification (V&V) MCNP6 results calculated in parallel, with MPI, obtained mostly using its event generators at intermediate and high-energies, but also several examples of results using data libraries at energies below 150 MeV, against various recent experimental data. It is the third part of a set of MCNP6 Testing Primers, after its first, LA-UR-11-05129, and second, LA-UR-11-05627, publications. The MCNP6 test-problems discussed here are presented in the /VALIDATION CEM/, /VAL-IDATION LAQGSM/, and /DELAYED PARTICLES/ subdirectories in the MCNP6 /Testing/ directory. README files that contain short descriptions of every input file, the experiment, the quantity of interest that the experiment measures and its description in the MCNP6 output files, and the publication reference of that experiment are presented for every test-problem. Templates for plotting the corresponding results with xmgrace as well as pdf files with figures representing the final results of our V&V efforts are presented. Several technical "bugs" in MCNP6 while running it in parallel with MPI using its event generators were discovered during our current V&V of MCNP6 and were fixed mostly by Dr. Jeffrey S. Bull. Our results show that MCNP6 using its CEM03.03, LAQGSM03.03, Bertini, INCL+ABLA, and ISABEL event generators describes, as a rule, reasonably well different intermediate-and high-energy measured data and agrees very well with calculations by other codes. Just as expected, the MCNP6 results obtained with MPI are practically the same as the ones calculated with MCNP6 in a sequential mode. This primer isn't meant to be read from cover to cover. Readers may skip some sections and go directly to a test-problem they are interested in.

MCNP6 Simulation of Reactions of Interest to FRIB, Medical, and Space Applications

“…1 presents only two examples of n spectra, from 400 MeV/A 14 N + 12 C and 64 Cu. Similar results were obtained ( see [5]) with the production version of MCNP6 for other measurements published in [7,8]. Our current good results obtained with the production version of MCNP6 for the measurements published in [7,8] make questionable to us the quite poor results by a version of LAQGSM used in a version of MCNPX and even worse results published in Ref.…”

Validation and verification of MCNP6 against intermediate and high-energy experimental data and results by other codes

“…In the present work, we present only a small part of our recent extensive V&V of MCNP6 [6,7] using as event-generators mostly CEM03.03 and LAQGSM03.03. For convenience, we start with the V&V of MCNP6 using CEM, followed by results using LAQGSM.…”

“…Both these documents [8,9] will be included in the package to be distributed to the MCNP6 users. The two MCNP6 Primers [6,7] show examples of MCNP6 input files with both these options. Below, in cases of test-problems with thin targets, we show examples of using either the first or the second option (or both of them, as shown in Fig.…”

Features of MCNP6

“…These benchmarks exercise the ability to create and transport high energy particles using CEM. 51,52 Tests, and their experimental comparisons to data, are of the following categories: isotope production by bremsstrahlug photons of energies from 30 MeV to 4.5 GeV impacting a thin 93 Nb target and double-differential spectra of protons spectra at several angles produced by bremsstrahlug photons of energies from 30 MeV to 4.5 GeV on a thin 12 C target; delayed neutron emitters production from a thin 238 U target bombarded with 1 GeV protons; neutron and gamma spectra resulting from 18 MeV protons on water containing 18 O; backward and off-axis angle spectra of neutrons resulting from 1200 MeV protons on thick Fe cylinders; proton and complex particles spectra (gas production) from thin 238 U, 197 Au, and 209 Bi thin targets bombarded with nucleons of energies below 1 GeV, to name just a few.…”

“…It is similar to the VALIDATION_CEM suite, but intended to test the high-energy event generator LAQGSM03.03. 51,57 LAQGSM is the only model used by MCNP6 allowing simulated interactions with heavy-ions and with almost all types on elementary particles at energies up to about 1 TeV/nucleon. This directory contains eighteen comparisons of resulting neutrons, protons, deuterons, tritons, 3 He, 4 He, pion, and kaon double-differential spectra from various reactions induced by protons, photons, and heavy-ions with incident energies up to 400 GeV.…”