• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.1310-1319
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• 2024

The reactor cavity cooling system (RCCS) is a passive reactor safety system commonly present in the designs of High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors (HTGR) that removes heat from the reactor pressure vessel by means of natural convection and radiation. It is one of the factors responsible for ensuring that the reactor does not melt down under any plausible accident scenario. For the simulation of accident scenarios, which are transient phenomena unfolding over a span of up to several days, intermediate fidelity methods and system codes must be employed to limit the models' execution time. These models can quantify radiation heat transfer well, but heat transfer caused by natural convection must be quantified with the use of correlations for the heat transfer coefficient. It is difficult to obtain reliable correlations for HTGR RCCS heat transfer coefficients experimentally due to such a system's size. They could, however, be obtained from high-fidelity steady-state simulations of RCCSs. The Rayleigh number in RCCSs is too high for using a Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) technique; thus, a Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach must be employed. There are many RANS models, each performing best under different geometry and fluid flow conditions. To find the most suitable one for simulating an RCCS, the RANS models need to be validated. This work benchmarks various RANS models against three experiments performed on the HTTR RCCS Mockup by the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) in 1993. This facility is a 1/6 scale model of a vessel cooling system (VCS) for the High Temperature Engineering Test Reactor (HTTR), which is operated by JAEA. Multiple RANS models were evaluated on a simplified 2d-axisymmetric geometry. They were found to reproduce the experimental temperature profiles with errors of up to 22% for the lowest temperature benchmark and 15% for the higher temperature benchmarks. The results highlight that the pragmatic turbulence models need to be validated for high Rayleigh natural convection-driven flows and improved accordingly, more publicly available experimental data of RCCS resembling experiments is needed and indicate that a 2d-axisymmetric geometry approximation is likely insufficient to capture all the relevant phenomena in RCCS simulations.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.147-157
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• 2022

The backward-facing step (BFS) is a benchmark geometry for analyzing flow separation occurred at the edge and resulting development of shear layer and recirculation zone that are occupied by turbulent flow. It is important to accurately reproduce and analyze the mean flow and turbulence statistics of such flows to design physically stable and performance assurance structure. We carried out 3D RANS computations with widely used, two representative turbulence models, k-ω SST and RNG k-ε, to reproduce BFS flow at the Reynolds number of 23,000 and the Froude number of 0.22. The performance of RANS computations is evaluated by comparing numerical results with an experimental measurement. Both RANS computations with two turbulence models appear to reasonably well reproduce mean flow in the shear layer and recirculation zone, while RNG k-ε computation results in about 5% larger velocity between the outer edge of boundary layer and the free surface above the recirculation zone than k-ω SST computation and experiment. Both turbulence models underestimate the shear stress distribution experimentally observed just downstream of the sharp edge of BFS, while shear stresses computed in the boundary layer downstream of reattachment point are agree reasonably well with experimental measurement. RNG k-ε modeling reproduces better shear stress distribution along the bottom boundary layer, but overestimates shear shear stress in the approaching boundary layer and above the bottom boundary layer downstream of the BFS.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers Conference
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• 2009.10a
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• pp.49-52
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• 2009

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.50 no.2
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• pp.89-97
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• 2017

Turbulent flow structure in the high amplitude meandering channel is complex due to secondary recirculation with helicoidal motions and shear layers formed by flow separation from the curved sidewall. In this work, the secondary flow and the superelevation of the water surface produced in the high-amplitude Kinoshita channel are reproduced by the unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) computations using the VOF technique for resolving the variation of water surface elevation and three statistical turbulence models ($k-{\varepsilon}$, RNG $k-{\varepsilon}$, $k-{\omega}$ SST). The numerical results computed by a second-order accurate finite volume method are compared with an existing experimental measurement. Among applied turbulence models, $k-{\omega}$ SST model relatively well predicts overall distribution of the secondary recirculation in the Kinoshita channel, while all three models yield similar prediction of water superelevation transverse slope. The secondary recirculation driven by the radial acceleration in the upstream bend affects the flow structure in the downstream bend, which yields a pair of counter-rotating vortices at the bend apex. This complex flow pattern is reasonably well reproduced by the $k-{\omega}$ SST model. Both $k-{\varepsilon}$ based models fail to predict the clockwise-rotating vortex between a pair of counter-rotating vortices which was observed in the experiment. Regardless of applied turbulence models, the present computations using the VOF method appear to well reproduce the superelevation of water surface through the meandering channel.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.157-164
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• 2015

The present work performs three-dimensional flow calculations based on Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) and Delayed Detached Eddy Simulation (DDES) to investigate the flow field of a transonic rotor (NASA Rotor 37) at near-stall condition. It is found that the DES approach is likely to predict well the complex flow characteristics such as secondary vortex or turbulent flow phenomenon than RANS approach, which is useful to describe the flow mechanism of a transonic compressor. Especially, the DES results show improvement of predicting the flow field in the wake region and the model captures reasonably well separated regions compared to the RANS model. Besides, it is discovered that the three-dimensional vortical flows after the vortex breakdown from the rotor tip region are widely distributed and its vortex structures are clearly present. Near the rotor leading edge, a part of the tip leakage flows in DES solution spill over into next passage of the blade owing to the separation vortex flow and the backflow is clearly seen around the trailing edge of rotor tip. Furthermore, the DES solution shows strong turbulent eddies especially in the rotor hub, rotor tip section and the downstream of rotor trailing edge compared to the RANS solution.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.8-14
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• 2017

In this paper, separated flow characteristics is studied using the RANS(Reynold-averaged Navier-Stokes) modeling. The analysis is performed for the NASA's hump configuration which is the combination of a flat plate and a hump. This configuration was used in NASA's flow control workshop and it was one of validation cases for RANS and LES simulations. The separation occurs at the 65% of model length where a slot is positioned for the flow control. No flow control case and steady suction case are studied using RANS modeling. The Spalart-Allmaras model and the SST(Shear Stress Transport) model are applied and their accuracy are compared. To correlate CFD analysis with experimental data, the optimal boundary condition was investigated and the effect of a cavity around the slot is studied for the no flow case.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.43 no.6 s.150
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• pp.667-674
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• 2006

Accurate prediction of ship dynamics, particularly roll motion, is very important in ship safety. In the past, empirical or vortex based methods were commonly used for the hydrodynamic roll damping predictions but they could not be applied to practical ship roll motion cause of limitations about geometries ad design conditions. Recently RANS-based techniques are developed for the practical ship motion analysis. In this study, RANS based roil analysis about a rectangular cylinder with WAVIS developed by MOERI/KORDI are performed and compared with the experimental data and other RANS results.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.11
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• pp.3625-3634
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• 2021

The crossflow is the key phenomenon in turbulent flow inside rod bundles. In order to establish confidence on application of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to simulate the crossflow in rod bundles, three Reynolds-Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) models i.e. the realizable k-ε model, the k-ω SST model and the Reynolds stress model (RSM), and the Large Eddy simulations (LES) with the Wall-Adapting Local Eddy-viscosity (WALE) model are validated based on the Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) flow measurement experiment in a 5 × 5 rod bundle. In order to investigate effects of periodic boundary condition in the gap, the numerical results obtained with four inner subchannels are compared with that obtained with the whole 5 × 5 rod bundle. The results show that periodic boundaries in the gaps produce strong errors far downstream of the spacer grid, and therefore the full 5 × 5 rod bundle should be simulated. Furthermore, it can be concluded, that the realizable k-ε model can only provide reasonable results very close to the spacer grid, while the other investigated models are in good agreement with the experimental data in the whole downstream flow in the rod bundle. The LES approach shows superiority to the RANS models.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.457-464
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• 2021

To analyze the buffet phenomenon that causes serious vibration loads on a satellite launch vehicle, the pressure fluctuations on a hammerhead launch vehicle at transonic speeds are predicted by coupling CFD analysis and semi-empirical methods. From the RANS simulation, shock oscillation region, separation region, and separation reattachment region are identified, and the boundary layer thickness, the displacement thickness, and flow properties at boundary layer edge are calculated. The pressure fluctuations and power spectra on the hammerhead fairing are predicted by coupling RANS results and semi-empirical methods considering spatial distribution, and compared with the experimental data.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.499-510
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• 2022

Computational Wind Engineering has rapidly grown in the last decades and it is currently reaching a relatively mature state. The prediction of wind loading by means of numerical simulations has been proved effective in many research studies and applications to design practice are rapidly spreading. Despite such success, caution in the use of simulations for wind loading assessment is still advisable and, indeed, required. The computational burden and the know-how needed to run high-fidelity simulations is often unavailable and the possibility to use simplified models extremely attractive. In this paper, the applicability of some well-known 2D unsteady RANS models, particularly the k-ω SST, in the aerodynamic characterization of extruded bodies with bluff sections is investigated. The main focus of this paper is on the drag coefficient prediction. The topic is not new, but, in the authors' opinion, worth a careful revisitation. In fact, despite their great technical relevance, a systematic study focussing on sections which manifest a fully detached flow configuration has been overlooked. It is here shown that the considered 2D RANS exhibit a pathological behaviour, failing to reproduce the transition between reattached and fully detached flow regime.