CFD ANALYSES OF THE INTERNAL BLOCKAGE IN THE NACIE-UP FUEL PIN BUNDLE SIMULATOR
I. Di Piazza,
Ranieri Marinari,
N. Forgione,
Fabrizio Magugliani,
Walter Borreani,
G. Lomonaco,
Heleen Doolaard,
F. Roelofs,
Federico Piscaglia,
Andrea Montorfano,
Vincent Moreau
17th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (NURETH 17) - september 2017
Download the publication :
In the context of GEN-IV heavy liquid metal-cooled reactors safety studies, the flow blockage in a fuel
sub-assembly is considered one of the main issues to be addressed and one of the most important
accidents for Lead Fast Reactors (LFR). In order to model the temperature and velocity field inside a
wrapped fuel assembly under unblocked and blocked conditions, a detailed experimental campaign as
well as 3D thermal hydraulic analyses of the fuel assembly are required.
The present paper is focused on the CFD modeling and preliminary computational analysis of the new
experimental facility „Blocked‟ Fuel Pin bundle Simulator (BFPS) that will be inserted in the heavy liquid
metal NACIE-UP (NAtural CIrculation Experiment-UPgrade) facility located at the ENEA Brasimone
Research Center (Italy). The BFPS test section aims to carry out suitable experiments to fully investigate
different flow blockage regimes in a 19-pin fuel bundle providing experimental data in support of the
development of the ALFRED (Advanced Lead-cooled Fast Reactor European Demonstrator) LFR
DEMO. The BFPS test section, LBE cooled, was conceived with a thermal power of about 250 kW and a
wall heat flux up to 0.7 MW/m 2 , which are relevant values for a LFR. It consists of 19 grid-spaced
electrical pins placed on a hexagonal lattice with a pitch to diameter ratio of 1.4 and a diameter of 10 mm.
The geometrical domain of the fuel pin bundle simulator was designed to reproduce the geometrical
features of ALFRED, e.g. the external wrapper in the active region and the spacer grids.
Different modeling approaches (e.g. meshing, turbulence modeling, codes and users) in RANS, URANS
and LES will be compared to each other. The pre-test analyses presented here will facilitate the post-test
analysis of the experimental data expected in 2017-2018. These calculations were carried out by applying
unambiguous boundary conditions. In addition conjugate heat transfer is also considered.
The comparison among different codes and turbulence models allows to make an overall assessment of
different approaches to CFD modeling and simulation. ANSYS CFX, STAR-CCM+ and OpenFOAM
simulations are compared to each other.
BibTex references
@InProceedings{DMFMBLDRPMM17a,
author = {Di Piazza, I. and Marinari, R. and Forgione, N. and Magugliani, F. and Borreani, W. and Lomonaco, G. and Doolaard, H. and Roelofs, F. and Piscaglia, F. and Montorfano, A. and Moreau, V.},
title = {CFD ANALYSES OF THE INTERNAL BLOCKAGE IN THE NACIE-UP FUEL PIN BUNDLE SIMULATOR},
booktitle = {17th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (NURETH 17)},
month = {september},
year = {2017},
organization = {NURETH-17},
keywords = {Heavy Liquid Metal, CFD, Flow Blockage},
url = {https://publications.crs4.it/pubdocs/2017/DMFMBLDRPMM17a},
}
Other publications in the database