• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.1555-1562
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• 2023

Natural circulation phenomena have been nowadays largely revisited aiming to investigate the performances of passive safety systems in carrying-out heat removal under accidental conditions. For this purpose, assessment studies using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) and also 3D thermal-hydraulic system codes are considered at different levels of the design and safety demonstration issues. However, these tools have not being extensively validated for specific natural circulation flow regimes involving flow mixing, temperature stratification, flow recirculation and instabilities. In the present study, an experimental test case based on a small-scale pool test rig experiment performed by Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, is considered for code-to-code and code-to-experimental data comparison. The test simulation is carried out using the FLUENT and the 3D thermal-hydraulic system CATHARE-2 codes. The objective is to evaluate and compare their prediction capabilities with respect to the test conditions of the experiment. It was observed that, notwithstanding their numerical and modelling differences, similar agreement results are obtained. Nevertheless, additional investigations efforts are still needed for a better representation of the considered phenomena.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.5
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• pp.1860-1873
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• 2022

Nuclear thermal-hydraulic system analysis codes have been developed to comprehensively model nuclear reactor systems to evaluate the safety of a nuclear reactor system. For analyzing complex systems with finite computational resources, system codes usually solve simplified fluid equations for coarsely discretized control volumes with one-dimensional assumptions and replace source terms in the governing equations with constitutive relations. Wall boiling heat transfer models are regarded as essential models in nuclear safety evaluation among many constitutive relations. The wall boiling heat transfer models of two widely used nuclear system codes, RELAP5 and TRACE, are analyzed in this study. It is first described how wall heat transfer models are composed in the two codes. By utilizing the same method described in Part 1 paper, heat fluxes from the two codes are compared under the same thermal-hydraulic conditions. The significant factors for the differences are identified as well as at which conditions the non-negligible difference occurs. Steady-state simulations with both codes are also conducted to confirm how the difference in wall heat transfer models impacts the simulation results.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.561-586
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• 2012

This paper describes a summary of final prediction results by system-scale safety analysis codes during the OECD/NEA/CSNI ISP-50 exercise, targeting a 50% Direct Vessel Injection (DVI) line break integral effect test performed with the Advanced Thermal-Hydraulic Test Loop for Accident Simulation (ATLAS). This ISP-50 exercise has been performed in two consecutive phases: "blind" and "open" phases. Quantitative comparisons were performed using the Fast Fourier Transform Based Method (FFTBM) to compare the overall accuracy of the collected calculations. Great user effects resulting from the combination of the possible reasons were found in the blind phase, confirming that user effect is still one of the major issues in connection with the system thermal-hydraulic code application. Open calculations showed better prediction accuracy than the blind calculations in terms of average amplitude (AA) value. A total of nineteen organizations from eleven countries participated in this ISP-50 program and eight leading thermal-hydraulic system analysis codes were used: APROS, ATHLET, CATHARE, KORSAR, MARS-KS, RELAP5/MOD3.3, TECH-M-97, and TRACE.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.344-363
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• 1999

A multi-dimensional thermal-hydraulic system analysis code, MARS 1.3.1, has been developed in order to have the realistic analysis capability of two-phase thermal-hydraulic transients for pressurized water reactor (PWR) plants. As the backbones for the MARS code, the RELAP5/MOD3.2.1.2 and COBRA-TF codes were adopted in order to take advantages of the very general, versatile features of RELAP5 and the realistic three-dimensional hydrodynamic module of COBRA-TF. In the MARS code, all the functional modules of the two codes were unified into a single code first. Then, the source codes were converted into the standard Fortran 90, and then they were restructured using a modular data structure based on "derived type variables" and a new "dynamic memory allocation" scheme. In addition, the Windows features were implemented to improve user friendliness. This paper presents the developmental work of the MARS version 1.3.1 including the hydrodynamic model unification, the heat structure coupling, the code restructuring and modernization, and their verifications.their verifications.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.17-25
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• 1998

This paper investigates coupled thermal, mechanical and hydraulic phenomena in deep rock mass especially for underground heat storage system. Firstly, concepts of underground heat storage were presented and coupling phenomena in this area were illustrated. In order to understand the basic mechanism of thermal, hydraulic and deformation behavior in rock cavern disturbed by thermal gradient about 10$0^{\circ}C$, various numerical experiments were conducted using several codes. The study involves the behavior of fractured rock mass including rock joint. In spite of the limitation of codes modelling fully coupled effects, these codes could be applied in analysis of underground heat storage. The heat loss in rock mass, which is a major factor in heat storage, is insignificant in all results.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.9
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• pp.2775-2787
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• 2021

At present, most of the widely used system codes for nuclear safety analysis are one-dimensional, which cannot effectively simulate the flow field of the reactor core or other structures. This is true even for the system codes containing three-dimensional modules with limited three-dimensional simulation function such as RELAP-3D. In contrast, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes excel at providing a detailed three-dimensional flow field of the reactor core or other components; however, the computational domain is relatively small and results in the very high computing resource consuming. Therefore, the development of coupling codes, which can make comprehensive use of the advantages of system and CFD codes, has become a research focus. In this paper, a review focus on the researches of coupled CFD and thermal-hydraulic system codes was carried out, which summarized the method of coupling, the data transfer processing between CFD and system codes, and the verification and validation (V&V) of coupled codes. Furthermore, a series of problems associated with the coupling procedure have been identified, which provide the general direction for the development and V&V efforts of coupled codes.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.11-32
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• 2006

System thermal-hydraulic codes have been used in the past decades in the areas of design, operation, licensing and safety of Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs). The development and validation of these codes have reached a high degree of maturity, through the consideration of huge experiments and advanced numerical models. Nowadays, the analyses are based upon realistic approaches rather than the conservative evaluation models. However the applications of these computational tools require preliminary qualification issues. Although huge amounts of financial and human resources have been invested for the development and improvement of codes, the calculation results are still affected by errors. In the sophisticated nuclear technology, design and safety of NPP, these errors must be quantified. An overview of the state of the art of the current thermal-hydraulic system code is developed and the need of uncertainty analysis in code calculations is emphasized. Several sources of uncertainty have been classified and commented, and typical applications of such methods are shown.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.9
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• pp.3526-3539
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• 2022

Nuclear thermal-hydraulic system analysis codes have been developed to simulate nuclear reactor systems, which solve simplified governing equations by replacing source terms with constitutive relations for simulating entire reactor systems with low computational resources. For half a century, many efforts have been made for wider versatility and higher accuracy of system codes, but various factors can affect the code analysis results, and it was difficult to isolate these factors and interpret them individually. In this study, two system codes, RELAP5 and TRACE, which have many users and are highly reliable, are selected to analyze only the effects of constitutive relations. The influence of constitutive relations is analyzed using in-house platforms that replicate constitute relations of RELAP5 and TRACE equally to exclude factors that may affect analysis results, such as governing equation solvers and user effects. Among the various constitutive relations, the analysis is performed on the wall variables expected to have the most influence on the analysis results. Part 1 paper presents the methodology and wall friction model comparison, while Part 2 paper shows wall heat transfer comparison of the two selected codes.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.1495-1507
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• 2022

The improvement of thermal-hydraulic analysis techniques is essential to ensure the safety and reliability of nuclear power plants. The one-dimensional two-fluid model has been adopted in state-of-the-art thermal-hydraulic system codes. Current constitutive equations used in the system codes reach a mature level. Some exceptions are the partition method of wall friction in the momentum equation of the two-fluid model and the interfacial drag force model for a horizontal two-phase flow. This study is focused on deriving the partition method of wall friction in the momentum equation of the two-fluid model and modeling the interfacial drag force model for a horizontal bubbly flow. The one-dimensional momentum equation in the two-fluid model is derived from the local momentum equation. The derived one-dimensional momentum equation demonstrates that total wall friction should be apportioned to gas and liquid phases based on the phasic volume fraction, which is the same as that used in the SPACE code. The constitutive equations for the interfacial drag force are also identified. Based on the assessments, the Rassame-Hibiki correlation, Hibiki-Ishii correlation, Ishii-Zuber correlation, and Rassame-Hibiki correlation are recommended for computing the distribution parameter, interfacial area concentration, drag coefficient, and relative velocity covariance of a horizontal bubbly flow, respectively.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.1911-1923
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• 2023

The nuclear safety assessment involving large transient simulations is forcing the community to develop methods for coupling thermal-hydraulics and neutronic codes and three-dimensional (3D) Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes. In this paper a set of dynamic boundary conditions are implemented in OpenFOAM^Ⓡ in order to apply zero-dimensional (0D) approaches coupling with 3D thermal-hydraulic simulation in a single framework. This boundary conditions are applied to model pipelines, tanks, pumps, and heat exchangers. On a first stage, four tests are perform in order to assess the implementations. The results are compared with experimental data, full 3D CFD, and system code simulations, finding a general good agreement. The semi-implicit implementation nature of these boundary conditions has shown robustness and accuracy for large time steps. Finally, an application case, consisting of a simplified open pool with a cooling external circuit is solved to remark the capability of the tool to simulate thermal hydraulic systems commonly found in nuclear installations.