Thermal-Hydraulic Analysis of A Wire-Spacer Fuel Assembly

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.