Study on numerical simulation of bubble and dissolved gas behavior in liquid metal flow

Ito, Kei; Ohno, Shuji ; Kamide, Hideki ; Kogawa, Hiroyuki  ; Futakawa, Masatoshi  ; Kawamura, Takumi*; Imai, Yasutomo*

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency has been developed a plant dynamics code VIBUL to simulate the concentration distributions of the dissolved gas and the bubbles in a fast reactor. In this study, the VIBUL code is improved to achieve accurate simulations, e.g. rigorous mole conservation of inert gas. Moreover, new modles are introduced to simulate the small bubble behaviors in the J-PARC mercury target system. To validate the improved models and the newly developed models, the inert gas behaviors in the large-scale sodium-cooled reactor and the small bubble behaviors are simulated. As a result, it is confirmed that the complicated bubble dynamics in each component, e.g. core, IHX or surge tank, can be simulated appropriately by the VIBUL code.