Mesh Generation Technology for Nuclear Reactor Simulation; Barriers and Opportunities

Journal Article · Wed Oct 01 04:00:00 EDT 2008 · Nuclear Engineering and Design

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nucengdes.2008.05.016· OSTI ID:939201

Hansen, Glen; Owen, Steve

Mesh generation in support of nuclear reactor simulation has much in common with the requirements of other application areas, such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Indeed, fluid dynamics analysis of the coolant behavior inside the reactor core is an internal flow problem that requires the resolution of spatial and temporal variations in the flow caused by complex component configurations, fluids/ structure interaction, turbulence, and thermal heating of the coolant. Thus, typical concerns of meshing complex geometries; the use of hexahedral vs. tetrahedral elements, element geometric quality, mesh smoothness, use of anisotropic elements in the thermal boundary layer, etc., are all considerations important to the reactor meshing problem. Reactor meshing begins to become more specialized as the need to employ reactor simulation as a predictive design and safety analysis capability grows in importance. First, a predictive capability will require more precise physical models to be included, and these models will need to be supported by a computational science framework that will allow them to be accurately approximated both spatially and temporally during the reactor core analysis. Both the multiphysical nature of the composite reactor model and details of the physics algorithms themselves will place new requirements on the meshing process needed to support multidimensional reactor simulation. This article discusses the current state of meshing technology applied to reactor simulation and examines a set of issues that are important in the generation of high-quality reactor meshes today and in the future.

• Research Organization: Idaho National Laboratory (INL)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC07-99ID13727
• OSTI ID: 939201
• Report Number(s): INL/JOU-07-13524
• Journal Information: Nuclear Engineering and Design, Journal Name: Nuclear Engineering and Design Journal Issue: 10 Vol. 238; ISSN NEDEAU; ISSN 0029-5493
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
ALGORITHMS
BOUNDARY LAYERS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
COOLANTS
FLUID MECHANICS
HEATING
MESH GENERATION
PHYSICS
REACTOR CORES
REACTORS
RESOLUTION
ROUGHNESS
SAFETY ANALYSIS
SIMULATION
TURBULENCE
mesh adaptation
multiphysics meshing
reactor mesh generation