EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL STUDY OF THE MYRRHA CONTROL ROD SYSTEM DYNAMICS

This paper presents an experimental and numerical investigation of the buoyancy driven MYRRHA control rod (CR) insertion during an emergency SCRAM. The study aimed to support the MYRRHA reactor design and characterise the hydrodynamic behaviour of the CR system while demonstrating the proof-of-principle. A full-scale mock-up test section of the MYRRHA CR was constructed to test the hydrodynamics in Lead Bismuth Eutectic over a wide range of operating conditions, to provide experimental data for the qualification of the CR system. A numerical CFD model of the CR test section was also setup in STAR-CCM+. The simulations make use of the recently developed overset mesh method to simulate the dynamic two-way coupling between the moving CR bundle and the fluid domain. The numerical methodology and post-test simulation results are validated against the experimental results. The steady state hydraulic results and the transient insertion results from both the experimental and numerical efforts are presented. The influence of the global process conditions on the CR insertion time are presented as well. This investigation successfully demonstrates the CR insertion proof-of-principle during a SCRAM.

@InProceedings{KLPMV17,
  author       = {Kennedy, G. and Lamberts, D. and Profir, M. and Moreau, V. and Van Tichelen, K.},
  title        = {EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL STUDY OF THE MYRRHA CONTROL ROD SYSTEM DYNAMICS},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings of ICAPP 2017},
  series       = {ICAPP 2017},
  month        = {april},
  year         = {2017},
  note         = {April 24-28, 2017 - Fukui and Kyoto (Japan)},
  keywords     = {MYRRHA, Control Rod, COMPLOT, CFD, STARCCM+, LBE},
  url          = {https://publications.crs4.it/pubdocs/2017/KLPMV17},
}