Systems Engineering Approach to the Heat Transfer Analysis of PLUS 7 Fuel Rod Using ANSYS FEM Code

This paper describes the system engineering approach for the heat transfer analysis of plus7 fuel rod for APR1400 using, a commercial software, ANSYS. The fuel rod is composed of fuel pellets, fill gas, end caps, plenum spring and cladding. The heat is transferred from the pellet outward by conduction through the pellet, fill gas and cladding and further by convection from the cladding surface to the coolant in the flow channel. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the temperature and heat flux change from the fuel centerline to the cladding surface when having maximum fuel centerline temperature at 100% power. This phenomenon is modelled using the ANSYS FEM code and analyzed for steady state temperature distribution across the fuel pellet and clad and the results were compared to the standard values given in APR1400 SSAR. Specifically the applicability of commercial software in the evaluation of nuclear fuel temperature distribution has been accounted. It is note that special codes have been used for fuel rod mechanical analysis which calculates interrelated effects of temperature, pressure, cladding elastic and plastic behavior, fission gas release, and fuel densification and swelling under the time-varying irradiation conditions. To satisfactorily meet this objective we apply system engineering methodologies to formulate the process and allow for verification and validation of the results acquired. The close proximity of the results obtained validated the accuracy of the FEM analysis of the 2D axisymmetric model and 3D model. This result demonstrated the validity of commercial software instead of proprietary in-house code that is more costly to develop and maintain.