Large-eddy simulations of turbulent flow for grid-to-rod fretting in nuclear reactors

Bakosi, J.; Christon, M. A.; Lowrie, R. B.; Pritchett-Sheats, L. A.; Nourgaliev, R. R.

doi:10.1016/j.nucengdes.2013.06.007

Title: Large-eddy simulations of turbulent flow for grid-to-rod fretting in nuclear reactors

Journal Article · Fri Jul 12 00:00:00 EDT 2013 · Nuclear Engineering and Design

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nucengdes.2013.06.007· OSTI ID:1233158

Bakosi, J. ^[1]; Christon, M. A. ^[1]; Lowrie, R. B. ^[1]; Pritchett-Sheats, L. A. ^[1]; Nourgaliev, R. R. ^[2]

Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)

The grid-to-rod fretting (GTRF) problem in pressurized water reactors is a flow-induced vibration problem that results in wear and failure of the fuel rods in nuclear assemblies. In order to understand the fluid dynamics of GTRF and to build an archival database of turbulence statistics for various configurations, implicit large-eddy simulations of time-dependent single-phase turbulent flow have been performed in 3 × 3 and 5 × 5 rod bundles with a single grid spacer. To assess the computational mesh and resolution requirements, a method for quantitative assessment of unstructured meshes with no-slip walls is described. The calculations have been carried out using Hydra-TH, a thermal-hydraulics code developed at Los Alamos for the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light water reactors, a United States Department of Energy Innovation Hub. Hydra-TH uses a second-order implicit incremental projection method to solve the singlephase incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. The simulations explicitly resolve the large scale motions of the turbulent flow field using first principles and rely on a monotonicity-preserving numerical technique to represent the unresolved scales. Each series of simulations for the 3 × 3 and 5 × 5 rod-bundle geometries is an analysis of the flow field statistics combined with a mesh-refinement study and validation with available experimental data. Our primary focus is the time history and statistics of the forces loading the fuel rods. These hydrodynamic forces are believed to be the key player resulting in rod vibration and GTRF wear, one of the leading causes for leaking nuclear fuel which costs power utilities millions of dollars in preventive measures. As a result, we demonstrate that implicit large-eddy simulation of rod-bundle flows is a viable way to calculate the excitation forces for the GTRF problem.

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Research Organization:: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE

Grant/Contract Number:: AC52-06NA25396

OSTI ID:: 1233158

Report Number(s):: LA-UR-12-26572; PII: S0029549313003129

Journal Information:: Nuclear Engineering and Design, Vol. 262, Issue C; ISSN 0029-5493

Publisher:: ElsevierCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 27 works

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Cited By (2)

Direct Numerical Simulation and Wall-Resolved Large Eddy Simulation in Nuclear Thermal Hydraulics Tiselj, Iztok; Flageul, Cedric; Oder, Jure Nuclear Technology, Vol. 206, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1614381	journal	June 2019
The effect of coupled wear and creep during grid-to-rod fretting Wang, Hai; Hu, Zupan; Lu, Wei Nuclear Engineering and Design, Vol. 318 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nucengdes.2017.04.018	journal	July 2017

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