CFD Simulation of the Control Rod Emergency Insertion in the MYRRHA Nuclear Facility

MYRRHA is an experimental nuclear reactor whose design is under development at the Belgium Nuclear Agency SCK•CEN. In the framework of the FP7 MAXSIMA European project, CRS4 is giving contributions to the design performing the CFD modeling with STAR-CCM+® of parts of the nuclear systems and of related experimental setups.This work focuses on the CFD simulation of the Control Rod (CR) system dynamics in a flowing lead-bismuth environment during a SCRAM emergency insertion, to be performed in less than 1s. The adopted moving mesh techniques employ the overlapping grids. The overset mesh method applies well to complex flow paths, once the ability of handling small or zero gaps is acquired. The method is applied to reproduce the CR displacement as in the COMPLOT experiment, with several preliminary simplifications and gradually increased geometrical accuracy. At first, the displacement is imposed according to theoretical calculations. Then it is inferred by Newton’s law from the force balance on the CR. In this presentation, the numerical simulation of the imposed displacement and of the two-way coupling motion will be illustrated. The numerical methodology and results will in the future be validated against the COMPLOT experimental tests and will be used further to support the MYRRHA design.

@InProceedings{PMK16a,
  author       = {Profir, M. and Moreau, V. and Kennedy, G.},
  title        = {CFD Simulation of the Control Rod  Emergency Insertion in the  MYRRHA Nuclear  Facility},
  booktitle    = {http://sgc2016.star-global-conference.com/presentations#Energy},
  series       = {STAR Global Conference },
  month        = {march},
  year         = {2016},
  address      = {Prague},
  keywords     = {CFD, control rod, numerical simulation, overset},
  url          = {https://publications.crs4.it/pubdocs/2016/PMK16a},
}