Numerical investigation of the flow in the Fuel Assembly of the Advanced Lead Fast Reactor European Demonstrator (ALFRED) using LES, DES and RANS-based turbulence models

In the context of GEN-IV heavy liquid metal-cooled reactors safety studies, the flow in the Fuel Assembly (FA) is critical for ensuring the proper removal of the fission heat; the blockage of a sub-channel of the FA is considered one of the most important and realistic accident condition. The temperature of the coolant leaving the FA is an important indicator of the health of the FA (i.e. the effective heat removal) and is usually monitored via a dedicated, safety-related system (e.g. thermocouple). The blockage of a sub-channel in the FA impairs the correct cooling of the fuel pins, may be the root cause of anomalous heating of the cladding and of the wrapper and potentially impact other fuel pins not directly located in the proximity of the blocked area. This paper presents the results for the flow field as predicted by different turbulence models (LES, DES, RANS-based) using commercial codes (ANSYS Fluent, ANSYS CFX, CD-adapco STAR-CCM+) as well as open source code (OpenFOAM). In 2017 the new facility Blocked Fuel Pin bundle Simulator (BFPS) will be installed within the NACIE-UP (NAtural CIrculation Experiment-UPgrade) facility located at the ENEA Brasimone Research Center (Italy) to perform an experimental campaign whose results will provide the validation of the numerical investigations.

@InProceedings{MDMPMBM16,
  author       = {Magugliani, F. and Di piazza, I. and Moreau, V. and Piscaglia, F. and Montorfano, A. and Borreani, W. and Marinari, R.},
  title        = {	Numerical investigation of the flow in the Fuel Assembly of the Advanced Lead Fast Reactor European Demonstrator (ALFRED) using LES, DES and RANS-based turbulence models},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings, protagonists and salient moments of the 2016 edition},
  year         = {2016},
  organization = {International CAE Conference },
  note         = {Parma, Italy | 17th - 18th October 2016},
  keywords     = {Fuel Assembly, ALFRED, CFD},
  url          = {https://publications.crs4.it/pubdocs/2016/MDMPMBM16},
}