• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.611-622
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• 2012

"Scaling" plays an important role for safety analyses in the licensing of water cooled nuclear power reactors. Accident analyses, a sub set of safety analyses, is mostly based on nuclear reactor system thermal hydraulics, and therefore based on an adequate experimental data base, and in recent licensing applications, on best estimate computer code calculations. In the field of nuclear reactor technology, only a small set of the needed experiments can be executed at a nuclear power plant; the major part of experiments, either because of economics or because of safety concerns, has to be executed at reduced scale facilities. How to address the scaling issue has been the subject of numerous investigations in the past few decades (a lot of work has been performed in the 80thies and 90thies of the last century), and is still the focus of many scientific studies. The present paper proposes a "roadmap" to scaling. Key elements are the "scaling-pyramid", related "scaling bridges" and a logical path across scaling achievements (which constitute the "scaling puzzle"). The objective is addressing the scaling issue when demonstrating the applicability of the system codes, the "key-to-scaling", in the licensing process of a nuclear power plant. The proposed "road map to scaling" aims at solving the "scaling puzzle", by introducing a unified approach to the problem.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.13-22
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• 2009

A two-phase (gas and liquid) flow analysis solver, named CUPID, has been developed for a realistic simulation of transient two-phase flows in light water nuclear reactor components. In the CUPID solver, a two-fluid three-field model is adopted and the governing equations are solved on unstructured grids for flow analyses in complicated geometries. For the numerical solution scheme, the semi-implicit method of the RELAP5 code, which has been proved to be very stable and accurate for most practical applications of nuclear thermal hydraulics, was used with some modifications for an application to unstructured non-staggered grids. This paper is concerned with the effects of interpolation schemes on the simulation of two-phase flows. In order to stabilize a numerical solution and assure a high numerical accuracy, the second-order upwind scheme is implemented into the CUPID code in the present paper. Some numerical tests have been performed with the implemented scheme and the comparison results between the second-order and first-order upwind schemes are introduced in the present paper. The comparison results among the two interpolation schemes and either the exact solutions or the mesh convergence studies showed the reduced numerical diffusion with the second-order scheme.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.313-326
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• 2007

In this paper, an algorithm to reconstruct two orthogonal images into a three-dimensional image is developed in order to measure the bubble size and volume in a two-phase boiling flow. The central-active contour model originally proposed by P. $Szczypi\'{n}ski$ and P. Strumillo is modified to reduce the dependence on the initial reference point and to increase the contour stability. The modified model is then applied to the algorithm to extract the object boundary. This improved central contour model could be applied to obscure objects using a variable threshold value. The extracted boundaries from each image are merged into a three-dimensional image through the developed algorithm. It is shown that the object reconstructed using the developed algorithm is very similar or identical to the real object. Various values such as volume and surface area are calculated for the reconstructed images and the developed algorithm is qualitatively verified using real images from rubber clay experiments and quantitatively verified by simulation using imaginary images. Finally, the developed algorithm is applied to measure the size and volume of vapor bubbles condensing in a subcooled boiling flow.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.349-358
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• 2007

A single-beam gamma densitometer is utilized to measure the average void fraction in a small diameter stainless steel pipe under critical flow conditions. A typical design of a single-beam gamma densitometer is composed of a sealed gammaray source, a collimator, a scintillation detector, and a data acquisition system that includes an amplifier and a single channel analyzer. It is operated in the count mode and can be calibrated with a test pipe and various types of phantoms made of polyethylene. A good average void fraction is obtained for a small diameter pipe with various flow regimes of the core, annular, stratified, and bubbly flows. Several factors influencing the performance of the gamma densitometer are examined, including the distance between the source and the detector, the measuring time, and the ambient temperature. The void fraction is measured during an adiabatic downward two-phase critical flow in a vertical pipe. The test pipe has an inner diameter of 10.9 mm and a thickness of 3.2 mm. The average void fraction was reasonably measured for a two-phase critical flow in the presence of nitrogen gas.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.7
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• pp.2162-2173
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• 2021

In this paper, the coupling of fine-mesh computational fluid dynamics (CFD) thermal-hydraulics (TH) code and neutronics code is achieved using the Ansys Fluent User Defined Function (UDF) for code development, including parallel meshing mapping, data computation, and data transfer. Also, some CFD schemes are designed for mesh mapping and data transfer to guarantee physical conservation in the coupling computation. Because there is no rigorous research that gives robust guidance on the various CFD schemes that must be obtained before the fine-mesh coupling computation, this work presents a quantitative analysis of the CFD meshing and mapping schemes to improve the accuracy of the value and location of key physical prediction. Furthermore, the effect of the sub-pin scale coupling computation is also studied. It is observed that even the pin-resolved coupling computation can also create a large deviation in the maximum value and spatial locations, which also proves the significance of the research on mesh mapping and data transfer for CFD code in a coupling computation.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.777-788
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• 2018

An investigation on the thermal buckling resistance of simply supported FGM beams having parabolic-concave thickness variation and temperature dependent material properties is presented in this paper. An analytical formulation based on the first order beam theory is derived and the governing differential equation of thermal stability is solved numerically using finite difference method. a function of thickness variation is introduced which controls the parabolic variation intensity of the beam thickness without changing its original material volume. The results showed the high importance of taking into account the temperature-dependent material properties in the thermal buckling analysis of such critical beam sections. Different Influencing parametric on the thermal stability are studied which may help in design guidelines of such complex structures.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.679-695
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• 2015

A numerical solution using finite difference method to evaluate the thermal buckling of simply supported FGM plate with variable thickness is presented in this research. First, the governing differential equation of thermal stability under uniform temperature through the plate thickness is derived. Then, the governing equation has been solved using finite difference method. After validating the presented numerical method with the analytical solution, the finite difference formulation has been extended in order to include variable thickness. The accuracy of the finite difference method for variable thickness plate has been also compared with the literature where a good agreement has been found. Furthermore, a parametric study has been conducted to analyze the effect of material and geometric parameters on the thermal buckling resistance of the FGM plates. It was found that the thickness variation affects isotropic plates a bit more than FGM plates.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.287-294
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• 2009

Due to thermal hydraulics phenomena, such as thermal stratification, various events occur to the parts of a nuclear power plant during their lifetimes: e.g. cracked and dislocated pipes and thermally fatigued, bent, and damaged supports. Due to the operational characteristics of the parts of the steam generator feedwater inlet horizontal pipe, thermal stratification takes place particularly frequently. However, the thermal stress due to thermal stratification at the steam generator feedwater inlet horizontal pipe was not reflected in the design stage of old plants(Kori Unit No.1, 2, 3 and 4, Yeonggwang Unit No. 1 and 2, and Uljin Unit No. 1 and 2; referred to as old-style power plants hereinafter). Accordingly, a verification experiment was performed for thermal stratification in the horizontal inlet nozzle steam generator of old-style plants. If thermal stratification occurred in the horizontal pipe of an old-style power plant, numerical analysis of the temperature distribution of the pipes and fluids was conducted. The temperature distributions were compared at the curved part of the pipe and the horizontal pipe before and after the installation of the improved thermal sleeves designed to alleviate thermal stress due to thermal stratification. The thermal stress reduction measure was proven effective at the steam generator inlet horizontal pipe and the curved part of the pipe.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.542-550
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• 1996

Nuclear ship reactors have several features different from land-based PWR's. Especially, effects of ship motions on reactor thermal-hydraulics and good load following capability for abrupt load changes are essential characteristics of nuclear ship reactors. This study modified the RETRAN-03 to analyze the thermal-hydraulic transients under three-dimensional ship motions, named RETRAN-03/MOV in order to apply to future marine reactors. First Japanese nuclear ship MUTSU reactor have been analyzed under various ship motions to verify this code. Calculations have been peformed under rolling, heaving and stationary inclination conditions during normal operation. Also, the natural circulation has been analyzed, which can provide the decay heat removal to ensure the passive safety of marine reactors. As results, typical thermal-hydraulic characteristics of marine reactors such as flow rate oscillations and S/G water level oscillations have been successfully simulated at various conditions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.54-59
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• 2019

The main objective of nuclear reactor safety is to maintain the nuclear fuel in a thermally safe condition with enough safety margins during normal operation and anticipated operational occurrences. In this research, core flow bypass is studied under the conditions of the unavailability of safety systems. As core bypass occurs, the core flow rate is assumed to decrease exponentially with a time constant of 25 s to new steady state values of 20, 40, 60, and 80% of the nominal core flow rate. The thermal hydraulic code PARET is used through these calculations. Reactor thermal hydraulic stability is reported for all cases of core flow bypass.