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U.S. Department of Energy
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Validation of Oregon State University High Temperature Test Facility Experiments Using Pronghorn

Conference ·
OSTI ID:1812869

The OSU High Temperature Test Facility is a quarter-scale diameter, 1/64 scale volume test facility meant to replicate thermophysical phenomena in the prototypical General Atomics Modular High Temperature Gas Reactor. Tests pertaining to conduction cooldown events were performed from 2016-2019, providing a large database by which computational methods that are applicable to different length scales can be validated. One of these codes is Pronghorn, which is a coarse-meshed, porous-based subchannel thermal hydraulics code based on the MOOSE application, with the intention of better capturing the physics of both conduction and convection heat transfer within the OSU HTTF core. The goal of this summer project is to develop the framework by which Pronghorn can perform validation exercises of the HTTF core for benchmarking, by generating a mesh appropriate to the geometry of the HTTF core, developing input decks that accurately capture the initial and boundary conditions, materials, and relevant equations to the physics seen in the HTTF core, and using a postprocessor to compare simulation results to various experimental data. While validation of codes is a multi-year project, a mesh has been generated and tested in Pronghorn that meets mass conservation and basic heat transfer principles. The next step is to accurate depict the fluid inlet and outlet boundary conditions, which will be performed using computational fluid dynamics software.

Research Organization:
Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP); USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
DOE Contract Number:
AC07-05ID14517
OSTI ID:
1812869
Report Number(s):
INL/CON-21-63763-Rev000
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English