Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Mesh and turbulence model sensitivity analyses of computational fluid dynamic simulations of a 37M CANDU fuel bundle

  • Z. Lu (Faculty of Energy Systems and Nuclear Science, Ontario Tech University) ;
  • M.H.A. Piro (Faculty of Energy Systems and Nuclear Science, Ontario Tech University) ;
  • M.A. Christon (Computational Sciences International)
  • Received : 2021.09.21
  • Accepted : 2022.06.06
  • Published : 2022.11.25
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Abstract

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.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank J. Shaw (Ontario Tech University) for insight about fuel bundle design and CANDU operation and F. Abbasian (Stern Labs) for input on fuel bundle meshing strategies. High-Performance Computing resources provided by Compute Canada are greatly appreciated. This research was undertaken, in part, thanks to funding from the Canada Research Chairs program (950-231328) of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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