Development of numerical method for simulating melting behavior of fuel elements based on particle method

Nagatake, Taku ; Furuya, Masahiro*; Takase, Kazuyuki; Yoshida, Hiroyuki  ; Nagase, Fumihisa 

At the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami attacked the power plant on March 11, 2011. The tsunami caused station black out. Finally, the core meltdown occurred at Unit-1, 2 and 3. To clarify the core meltdown process, it is necessary to understand the melting behavior of fuel elements which consist of fuel assemblies and control rods. To understand this melting behavior, the fundamental characteristics and mechanism of the melting fuel elements must be evaluated. Then, we have developed the numerical simulation method for fundamental melting behavior of fuel elements based on the Moving Particle Semi-implicit (MPS) method. In this paper, outline of the presently developed numerical simulation method is shown. Then, the experiment to obtain the validation data for the simulation method is explained. The preliminary analysis results by the presently developed simulation method are shown and compared with the experimental results.