RELAP-7 Beta Release: Summary of Capabilities
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
RELAP-7 is a nuclear systems safety analysis code being developed at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). Building upon the decades of software development at the INL, we began the development of RELAP-7 in 2011 to support the Risk Informed Safety Margins Characterization (RISMC) Pathway. As part of this development, the first lines of RELAP-7 code were committed to the software revision control repository on November 7th, 2011. The overall design goal of RELAP-7 is to take advantage of the previous thirty years of advancements in computer architecture, software design, numerical methods, and physical models in order to provide capabilities needed for the RISMC methodology and to support nuclear power safety analysis. RELAP-7 is built using the INL’s modern scientific software development framework, MOOSE (Multi-physics Object Oriented Simulation Environment). MOOSE provides improved numerical calculations (including higher-order integration in both space and time, yielding converged second-order accuracy). The RELAP-7 code structure is based on multiple physical component models such as pipes, junctions, pumps, etc. Each component can have options for different fluid models such as single- and two-phase flow. This component-based and physics-based software architecture allows RELAP-7 to adopt different physical models for different applications. A relatively new two-phase hydrodynamic model, termed the ''7-Equation model'' for two phasic pressures, velocities, energies, and volumetric fraction, is incorporated into RELAP-7 for liquid-gas (water-steam) flows. This new model allows second-order integration because it is well-posed, which will reduce the numerical error associated with traditional systems analysis codes. In this paper, we provide a RELAP-7 capability list describing analysis features, range of applicability, and reactor components that will be available for the December 15th, 2014 beta release of the software.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 1177638
- Report Number(s):
- INL/EXT-14-33991; TRN: US1500079
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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