• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.169-179
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• 2000

A detailed numerical analysis of the evolution of thermal stratification in a curved piping system in a nuclear power plant is performed. A finite volume based thermal-hydraulic computer code has been developed employing a body-fitted, non-orthogonal curvilinear coordinate for this purpose. The cell-centered, non-staggered grid arrangement is adopted and the resulting checkerboard pressure oscillation is prevented by the application of momentum interpolation method. The SIMPLE algorithm is employed for the pressure and velocity coupling, and the convection terms are approximated by a higher-order bounded scheme. The thermal-hydraulic computer code developed in the present study has been applied to the analysis of thermal stratification in a curved duct and some of the predicted results are compared with the available experimental data. It is shown that the predicted results agree fairly well with the experimental measurements and the transient formation of thermal stratification in a curved duct is also well predicted.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.8
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• pp.1626-1637
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• 2020

This work covers an important point of the benchmark released by the expert group on Uncertainty Analysis in Modeling of Light Water Reactors. This ambitious benchmark aims to determine the uncertainty in light water reactors systems and processes in all stages of calculation, with emphasis on multi-physics (coupled) and multi-scale simulations. The Gesellschaft für Anlagen und Reaktorsicherheit methodology is used to propagate the thermal-hydraulic uncertainty of macroscopic parameters through TRACE5.0p3/PARCSv3.0 coupled code. The main innovative points achieved in this work are i) a new thermal-hydraulic model is developed with a highly-accurate 3D core discretization plus an iterative process is presented to adjust the 3D bypass flow, ii) a control rod insertion occurrence -which data is obtained from a real PWR test- is used as a transient simulation, iii) two approaches are used for the propagation process: maximum response where the uncertainty and sensitivity analysis is performed for the maximum absolute response and index dependent where the uncertainty and sensitivity analysis is performed at each time step, and iv) RESTING MATLAB code is developed to automate the model generation process and, then, propagate the thermal-hydraulic uncertainty. The input uncertainty information is found in related literature or, if not found, defined based on expert judgment. This paper, first, presents the Gesellschaft für Anlagen und Reaktorsicherheit methodology to propagate the uncertainty in thermal-hydraulic macroscopic parameters and, then, shows the results when the methodology is applied to a PWR reactor.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.2343-2351
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• 2024

Accurately predicting the thermal hydraulic parameters of a transient reactor core under different working conditions is the first step toward reactor safety. Mass flow rate and temperature are important parameters of core thermal hydraulics, which have often been modeled as time series prediction problems. This study aims to achieve accurate and continuous prediction of core thermal hydraulic parameters under instantaneous conditions, as well as test the feasibility of a newly constructed gated recurrent unit (GRU) model based on the soft attention mechanism for core parameter predictions. Herein, the China Experimental Fast Reactor (CEFR) is used as the research object, and CEFR 1/2 core was taken as subject to carry out continuous predictive analysis of thermal parameters under transient conditions., while the subchannel analysis code named SUBCHANFLOW is used to generate the time series of core thermal-hydraulic parameters. The GRU model is used to predict the mass flow and temperature time series of the core. The results show that compared to the adaptive radial basis function neural network, the GRU network model produces better prediction results. The average relative error for temperature is less than 0.5 % when the step size is 3, and the prediction effect is better within 15 s. The average relative error of mass flow rate is less than 5 % when the step size is 10, and the prediction effect is better in the subsequent 12 s. The GRU model not only shows a higher prediction accuracy, but also captures the trends of the dynamic time series, which is useful for maintaining reactor safety and preventing nuclear power plant accidents. Furthermore, it can provide long-term continuous predictions under transient reactor conditions, which is useful for engineering applications and improving reactor safety.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.199-212
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• 2008

A small-break loss of coolant accident (SB-LOCA) test with a break size equivalent to a 3-inch cold leg break of the APR1400 was carried out as the first transient integral effect test using the ATLAS (Advanced Thermal-hydraulic Test Loop for Accident Simulation). This was the first integral effect test to investigate the integral performance of the test facility and to verify its simulation capability for one of the design-basis accidents. Reasonably good thermal hydraulic data was obtained so that an integral performance of the fluid sub-systems was identified and control performance of the ATLAS was confirmed under real thermal hydraulic conditions. Based on the measured data, a post-test calculation was carried out using the best-estimate thermal hydraulic safety analysis code, MARS 3.1, and the similarity between the expected and actual data was investigated. On the whole, the post-test calculation reasonably predicts the major thermal hydraulic parameters measured during the SB-LOCA test. The obtained data will be used to enhance the simulation capability of the ATLAS and to improve an input model of the ATLAS for simulation of other target scenarios.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.106-111
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• 2001

This paper presents the numerical methodology of ATHOS3 code for thermal hydraulic analysis of Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) steam generators. Topics include porous media approach, governing equations, physical models and correlations for solid-to-fluid interaction and heat transfer, and numerical solution scheme. The ATHOS3 code is applied to the thermal hydraulic analysis of steam generator in the Korea Kori Unit-1 nuclear power plant and the computed results are presented.

• 유체기계공업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.12a
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• pp.473-478
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• 2004

This work presents the Thermal Hydraulic analysis has been performed for a 19-pin wire-spacer fuel assembly using three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations. SST model is used as a turbulence closure. The whole fuel assembly has been analyzed for one period of the wire-spacer using periodic boundary condition at inlet and outlet of the calculation domain. The overall results far a preliminary calculation show a good agreement with the experimental observations. It has been found that the major unidirectional flows are the axial velocity in sub-channels and the peripheral sweeping flows and the velocities are found to be following a cyclic path of period equal to the wire-wrap pitch. The temperature is found to be maximum in the central region and also, there exist a radial temperature gradient between the fuel rods. The major advantage of performing this kind of analysis is the prediction of thermal-hydraulic behavior of a fuel assembly with much ease.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.64-69
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• 2002

A numerical study has been peformed for evaluation of convection schemes for thermal hydraulic analysis in a liquid metal reactor Four convection schemes, HYBRID, QUICK, SMART and HLPA included in the CFX-4 code are considered. The performances of convection schemes are evaluated by applying them to the five test problems. The accuracy, stability and convergence are tested. It is shown that the HYBRID scheme is too diffusive, and the QUICK scheme exhibits overshoots and undershoots, and the SMART scheme shows convergence oscillations, and the HLPA scheme preserves the boundedness without causing convergence oscillations. The accuracies of SMART, QUICK and HLPA schemes are comparable. Thus, the use of HLPA scheme is highly recommended for thermal hydraulic analysis in a liquid metal reactor.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.7
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• pp.1417-1428
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• 2020

The design of a nuclear reactor core requires basic thermal-hydraulic information concerning the heat transfer regime at which onset of nucleate boiling (ONB) will occur, the pressure drop and flow rate through the reactor core, the temperature and power distributions in the reactor core, the departure from nucleate boiling (DNB), the condition for onset of flow instability (OFI), in addition to, the critical velocity beyond which the fuel elements will collapse. These values depend on coolant velocity, fuel element geometry, inlet temperature, flow direction and water column above the top of the reactor core. Enough safety margins to ONB, DNB and OFI must-emphasized. A heat transfer package is used for calculating convection heat transfer coefficient in single phase turbulent, transition and laminar regimes. The main objective of this paper is to study the possibility of power upgrading of WWR-S research reactor from 2 to 10 MW_th. This study presents a one-dimensional mathematical model (axial direction) for steady-state thermal-hydraulic design and analysis of the upgraded WWR-S reactor in which two types of plate fuel elements are employed. FOR-CONV computer program is developed for the needs of the power upgrading of WWR-S reactor up to 10 MW_th.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.439-458
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• 2013

REX-10 is a fully-passive small modular reactor in which the coolant flow is driven by natural circulation, the RCS is pressurized by a steam-gas pressurizer, and the decay heat is removed by the PRHRS. To confirm design decisions and analyze the transient responses of an integral PWR such as REX-10, a thermal-hydraulic system code named TAPINS (Thermal-hydraulic Analysis Program for INtegral reactor System) is developed in this study. Based on a one-dimensional four-equation drift-flux model, TAPINS incorporates mathematical models for the core, the helical-coil steam generator, and the steam-gas pressurizer. The system of difference equations derived from the semi-implicit finite-difference scheme is numerically solved by the Newton Block Gauss Seidel (NBGS) method. TAPINS is characterized by applicability to transients with non-equilibrium effects, better prediction of the transient behavior of a pressurizer containing non-condensable gas, and code assessment by using the experimental data from the autonomous integral effect tests in the RTF (REX-10 Test Facility). Details on the hydrodynamic models as well as a part of validation results that reveal the features of TAPINS are presented in this paper.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.45-53
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• 2019

Thermal-hydraulic passive safety systems (PSSs) are incorporated into many advanced reactor designs on the bases of simplicity, economics and inherent safety nature. Several factors among which are the critical parameters (CPs) that influence failure and reliability of thermal-hydraulic (t-h) passive systems are now being explored. For simplicity, it is assumed in most reliability analyses that the CPs are independent whereas in practice this assumption is not always valid. There is need to critically examine the dependency influence of the CPs on reliability of the t-h passive systems at design stage and in operation to guarantee safety/better performance. In this paper, two multivariate analysis methods (covariance and conditional subjective probability density function) were presented and applied to a simple PSS. The methods followed a generalized procedure for evaluating t-h reliability based on dependency consideration. A passively water-cooled steam generator was used to demonstrate the dependency of the identified key CPs using the methods. The results obtained from the methods are in agreement and justified the need to consider the dependency of CPs in t-h reliability. For dependable t-h reliability, it is advisable to adopt all possible CPs and apply suitable multivariate method in dependency consideration of CPs among other factors.