ABSTRACT. The physical phenomenon of neutrons transport associated with eigenvalue problems appears in the criticality calculations of nuclear reactors and can be treated as a diffusion process. This paper presents a method to solve eigenvalue problems of neutron diffusion in slab geometry and one energy group. This formulation combines the Finite Element Method, considered an intermediate mesh method, with the Spectral Green's Function Method, which is free of truncation errors, and it is considered a coarse mesh method. The novelty of this formulation is to approach the spatial moments of the neutron flux distribution by the first-order polynomials obtained from the spectral analysis of diffusion equation. The approximations provided by the proposed formulation allow obtaining accurate results in coarse mesh calculations. To validate the proposed method, we compared its results with methods described in the literature. The accuracy and computational performance of our formulation were characterized by solving a benchmark problem with a high degree of heterogeneity.

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RESUMO A indústria da construção civil tem um grande potencial para a reciclagem de resíduos mediante a incorporação desses materiais como agregados. O resíduo de EVA (Etileno-Acetato de Vinila) vem sendo utilizado como uma alterativa na produção de compósitos cimentícios leves em conjunto com fibras vegetais de Attalea funifera Martius (piaçava), como reforço. Neste trabalho, procurou-se modelar as propriedades mecânicas de resistência à compressão, resistência à tração e módulo de deformação de argamassas contendo agregados não convencionais como EVA e fibras de piaçava. Foi utilizado um modelo de regressão polinomial com três variáveis explicativas para modelar cada propriedade mecânica, utilizando como variáveis independentes as porcentagens de EVA e fibras presentes na mistura, e a relação água/cimento do material. A qualidade de ajuste dos modelos foi avaliada por meio de testes hipótese, e por critérios estatísticos, dentre deles Shapiro-Wilk, Durbin-Watson, Breusch-Pagan, coeficientes de determinação R2 e critério PRESS (Prediction Error Sum of Squares). Os resultados indicam que os modelos construídos reproduzem satisfatoriamente o comportamento do material. Por meio de simulações realizadas com os modelos propostos, constatou-se que a fibra de piaçava pode ser utilizada como reforço para melhorar as propriedades de resistência à tração e módulo de deformação para a argamassa, dessa forma, foi possível identificar uma proporção ótima entre os agregados.

Nowadays, the obtainment of an accurate numerical solution of fixed source discrete ordinates problems is relevant in many areas of engineering and science. In this work, we extend the hybrid Finite Element Spectral Green's Function method (FEM-SGF), originally developed to solve eigenvalue diffusion problems, for fixed source problems using as a mathematical model, the discrete ordinates formulation in one energy group with isotropic scattering in slab geometry. This new method, Extended Linear Discontinuous Discrete Ordinates (ELD-SN), is based on the use of neutron balance equations and the construction of a hybrid auxiliary equation. This auxiliary equation combines a linear discontinuous approximation and spectral parameters to approximate the neutron angular flux inside the cell. Numerical results for benchmark problems are presented to illustrate the accuracy and computational performance of our methodology. ELD-SN method is free from spatial truncation errors in S2 quadrature, and generate good results in the other quadrature sets. This method is more accurate than the conventional Diamond Difference (DD) and Linear Discontinuous (LD) methods, but surpassed by the Spectral Green's Function (SGF) method, for quadrature order greater than two.

In this work we describe the Service Quality Multi-Agent System (SQ-MAS), a software developed using a multiagent system platform to register failures in electric power distribution networks allowing the real-time calculation of several service quality indexes supervised by the Brazilian National Electric Agency (ANEEL).We introduce some basic concepts of generic MAS in order to illustrate the complexity of the problem related with the propagation of faults across the distribution network. The main features of SQ-MAS are listed and the calculation of the monitored indexes is addressed. A case study consisting of an Operation Unit of Petrobras, at Bahia State, Brazil, is used to illustrate how the system works.

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