• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.877-884
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• 2004

In this paper, structural analysis is performed to investigate the deformation of porous media in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Structural deformation of air plate of the fuel cell causes the change in configuration and cross sectional area of the channel. The distributions of mass flow rate and pressure are major factors to decide the performance of a PEMFC. These factors are affected by channel configuration of air plate. Two kinds of numerical air plate models are suggested for flow analyses. Deformed porous media and undeformed porous media are considered for the two models. The Numerical flow analysis results between deformed porous media and undeformed porous media have some discrepancy in pressure distribution. The pressure and velocity distribution under a working condition are numerically calculated to predict the performance of the air plates. Pressure and velocity distributions are compared for two models. It is shown that structural deformation makes difference in flow analysis results.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.258-270
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• 2020

A new task of using the Jacobian-Free-Newton-Krylov (JFNK) method for the PWR core transient simulations involving neutronics, thermal hydraulics and mechanics is conducted. For the transient scenario of PWR, normally the Picard iteration of the coupled coarse-mesh nodal equations and parallel channel TH equations is performed to get the transient solution. In order to solve the coupled equations faster and more stable, the Newton Krylov (NK) method based on the explicit matrix was studied. However, the NK method is hard to be extended to the cases with more physics phenomenon coupled, thus the JFNK based iteration scheme is developed for the nodal method and parallel-channel TH method. The local gap conductance is sensitive to the gap width and will influence the temperature distribution in the fuel rod significantly. To further consider the local gap conductance during the transient scenario, a 1D mechanics model is coupled into the JFNK scheme to account for the fuel thermal expansion effect. To improve the efficiency, the physics-based precondition and scaling technique are developed for the JFNK iteration. Numerical tests show good convergence behavior of the iterations and demonstrate the influence of the fuel thermal expansion effect during the rod ejection problems.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.279-284
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• 2021

In this study, the performance and distribution of fluid concentration, pressure, and current density of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell was investigated. In this paper, the two different types of flow field design were compared, singel channel and 5-channels. As a result, the 5-channels of flow field showed the better performance than that of single chanel. Especially, the single channel showed better performance in terms of mass transfer loss area.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.11
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• pp.4296-4309
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• 2022

Mesh and turbulence model sensitivity analyses have been performed on computational fluid dynamics simulations executed with Hydra and ANSYS Fluent for a single CANadian Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) 37M nuclear fuel bundle placed within a standard pressure tube. The goal of this work was to perform a methodical analysis to objectively determine an appropriate mesh and to gauge the sensitivity of different turbulence models for CANDU subchannel flow under isothermal conditions. The boundary conditions and material properties are representative of normal operating conditions in a high-powered channel of the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station. Four meshes were generated with ANSYS Workbench Meshing, ranging from 22 to 84 million cells, and analyzed here to determine an appropriate level of mesh resolution and quality. Five turbulence models were compared in the turbulence model sensitivity analysis: standard k - ε, RNG k - ε, realizable k - ε, SST k - ω, and the Reynolds Stress Model. The intent of this work was to gain confidence in mesh generation and turbulence model selection of a single bundle to inform the decision making of subsequent investigations of an entire fuel channel containing a string of twelve bundles.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.980-992
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• 2024

Steam line break accident (SLB) in the nuclear reactor is one of the representative Non-LOCA accidents in which thermal-hydraulics and neutron kinetics are strongly coupled each other. Thus, the multi-scale and multi-physics approach is applied in this study in order to examine a realistic safety margin. An entire reactor coolant system is modelled by system scale node, whereas sub-channel scale resolution is applied for the region of interest such as the reactor core. Fuel performance code is extended to consider full core pin-wise fuel behaviour. The MARU platform is developed for easy integration of the codes to be coupled. An initial stage of the steam line break accident is simulated on the MARU platform. As cold coolant is injected from the cold leg into the reactor pressure vessel, the power increases due to the moderator feedback. Three-dimensional coolant and fuel behaviour are qualitatively visualized for easy comprehension. Moreover, quantitative investigation is added by focusing on the enhancement of safety margin by means of comparing the minimum departure from nucleate boiling ratio (MDNBR). Three factors contributing to the increase of the MDNBR are proposed: Various geometric parameters, realistic power distribution by neutron kinetics code, Radial coolant mixing including sub-channel physics model.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.05a
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• pp.550-553
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• 2008

In this paper, experiments of air-breathing proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) for mobile devices were carried out according to the cathode conditions. These conditions are defined by the cathode flow field plate type (the channel type, the open type) and the cathode surface direction. Single cell and 6-cell stack were used in this experiments. The experimental results showed that the open type cathode flow field plate gave better performance for small size PEMFCs because the open type cathode plate allowed better air convection than the channel type cathode plate. In the experiments related to the direction of the slits on the cathode flow field plate, the horizontal slit cell was better than the vertical slit cell. With respect to the cathode surface direction, when the cathode surface is placed in the direction normal to the ground, PEMFC generated more stable power in the mass transport loss region.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.141-144
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• 2004

An analysis procedure for the MCFC channel flow has been developed to predict the fuel cell performance. The channel formed by the uniformly distributed trapezoidal supports is approximated by the porous medium that yields the equivalent pressure drop. The Wavier-Stokes, energy, and species equations are solved to obtain the velocity, temperature and concentration fields for a local current density which is computed from electrochemical correlations. The fuel cell characteristics, such as the temperature, pressure, mole concentration, voltage and current density distributions, are presented and discussed.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.33-36
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• 2008

Cell degradation when anode channels are blocked during cold start up was tested and measured. Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) stacks with several configurations of channel blockages were operated and decay in performance was analyzed. When only channels near hydrogen inlet were blocked, performance was rarely changed. In contrast, significant cell reversal occurred and considerable amount of $CO_2$ was produced when all channels near inlet and outlet were blocked. In the case, it was also observed that performance was severely decreased in the area where hydrogen was not supplied sufficiently.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.275-286
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• 1979

In 600 MWe CANDU-PHW reactors PMCR will be used on-site for calibration of the regional overpower system. PMCR will be executed off-line in one of the station computers. The program calculates accurate channel power maps by incorporating a fuel turnup dependent flux to power conversion algorithm. Fuel turnup is calculated by PMCR, hence it is independent of other software. Extensive comparisons with the uniform flux/power conversion approximations were made. Significant improvements in power mapping accuracy are achieved with PMCR.

• Journal of Korea Foundry Society
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.71-78
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• 2011

This study aims to investigate the formability of bipolar plates for fuel cell fabricated by vacuum die casting of ALDC 6. Cavity shape of mold is thin walled plate (size: $200mm{\times}200mm{\times}0.8mm$) with a serpentine channel (active area: $50mm{\times}50mm$). Before bipolar plate was made by HPDC, computational filling behavior and solidification was performed by MAGMA soft. The final mold design for location and direction of channel was determined by computational simulation. Also, according to injection speed conditions, simulation result was compared to actual die casting experimental result. When vacuum pressure, injection speed of low and high region is 350 mbar, 0.3 m/s and 2.5 m/s respectively, products had few casting defects. On the other hand, at the same as injection speed, without vacuum pressure, products had many casting defects between end of the channel and overflow.