ASSESSMENT OF MULTIPHASE CFD WITH ZERO CLOSURE MODEL FOR BOILING WATER REACTOR FUEL ASSEMBLIES

Conference · Tue Aug 01 04:00:00 EDT 2017

OSTI ID:1409683

Yoon, Su-Jong; Agostinelli, G.; Baglietto, E.

Extension of existing boiling closures to the high void fraction conditions of BWRs is one of challenges for M-CFD applications. This paper presents the assessment of an Eulerian M-CFD model with Zero closure model that has been specifically designed for two-phase flow and heat transfer applications in BWR fuel assemblies. The baseline Zero closure aims at including the simplest and most robust representation of the key physical mechanisms, rather than aiming at absolute accuracy of the predictions. The capabilities of M-CFD with Zero were evaluated against the international OECD/NRC BFBT benchmark data through the comparative analyses of local void fraction, sub-channel void fraction error and exit quality. INL high performance computing system has been employed to demonstrate the scalability of the M-CFD application to nuclear reactor fuel assemblies. The M-CFD simulation results show a good agreement with the experimental data for both quantitative and qualitative results, with the highest uncertainty being observed in the prediction of the local void fraction profile at low void fraction condition. This paper presents a recent view of the best practices for M-CFD of BWR fuel assemblies to provide a useful reference to identify and overcome common challenges in the applications of M-CFD tools. We provide recommendations for geometric modeling, mesh generation and solver configurations to optimize the methodology application.

• Research Organization: Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
• DOE Contract Number: AC07-05ID14517
• OSTI ID: 1409683
• Report Number(s): INL/CON-16-40542
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
BFBT Benchmark
Best Practice Guideline
Boiling Water Reactor
Multiphase CFD