Validation of the hybrid turbulence model in detailed thermal-hydraulic analysis code SPIRAL for fuel assembly using sodium experiments data of 37-pin bundles

Yoshikawa, Ryuji; Imai, Yasutomo*; Kikuchi, Norihiro; Tanaka, Masaaki; Ohshima, Hiroyuki

Nuclear Technology, 210(5), p.814 - 835, 2024/05

https://doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2249707

In the study of safety enhancement on advanced sodium-cooled fast reactor, it is essential to clarify the thermal-hydraulics under various operation conditions in a fuel assembly (FA) with the wire-wrapped fuel pins to assess the structural integrity of the fuel pin. A finite element thermal-hydraulics analysis code named SPIRAL has been developed to analyze the detailed thermal-hydraulics phenomena in a FA. In this study, the numerical simulations of the 37-pin bundle sodium experiments at different Re number conditions, including a transitional condition between laminar and turbulent flows and turbulent flow conditions, were performed to validate the hybrid turbulence model equipped in SPIRAL. The temperature distributions predicted by SPIRAL was consistent with those measured in the experiments. Through the validation study, the applicability of the hybrid turbulence model in SPIRAL to thermal-hydraulic evaluation of sodium-cooled FA in the wide range of Re number was confirmed.

Iterative methods with mixed-precision preconditioning for ill-conditioned linear systems in multiphase CFD simulations

Ina, Takuya*; Idomura, Yasuhiro; Imamura, Toshiyuki*; Yamashita, Susumu; Onodera, Naoyuki

Proceedings of 12th Workshop on Latest Advances in Scalable Algorithms for Large-Scale Systems ScalA21) (Internet), 8 Pages, 2021/11

https://doi.org/10.1109/ScalA54577.2021.00006

A new mixed-precision preconditioner based on the iterative refinement (IR) method is developed for preconditioned conjugate gradient (P-CG) and multigrid preconditioned conjugate gradient (MGCG) solvers in a multi-phase thermal-hydraulic CFD code JUPITER. In the IR preconditioner, all data is stored in FP16 to reduce memory access, while all computation is performed in FP32. The hybrid FP16/32 implementation keeps the similar convergence property as FP32, while the computational performance is close to FP16. The developed solvers are optimized on Fugaku (A64FX), and applied to ill-conditioned matrices in JUPITER. The P-CG and MGCG solvers with the new IR preconditioner show excellent strong scaling up to 8,000 nodes, and at 8,000 nodes, they are respectively accelerated up to 4.86 and 2.39 from the conventional ones on Oakforest-PACS (KNL).

Thermal-hydraulics to risk assessment; Roles of thermal-hydraulics simulation to risk assessment

Maruyama, Yu; Yoshida, Kazuo

Nihon Genshiryoku Gakkai-Shi ATOMO, 63(7), p.517 - 522, 2021/07

https://doi.org/10.3327/jaesjb.63.7_517

no abstracts in English

The Working group on the analysis and management of accidents (WGAMA); A Historical review of major contributions

Herranz, L. E.*; Jacquemain, D.*; Nitheanandan, T.*; Sandberg, N.*; Barr, F.*; Bechta, S.*; Choi, K.-Y.*; D'Auria, F.*; Lee, R.*; Nakamura, Hideo

Progress in Nuclear Energy, 127, p.103432_1 - 103432_14, 2020/09

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pnucene.2020.103432

Thermal-hydraulic analysis of the LBE spallation target head in JAEA

Wan, T.; Obayashi, Hironari; Sasa, Toshinobu

Nuclear Technology, 205(1-2), p.188 - 199, 2019/01

https://doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1478591

Considerations on phenomena scaling for BEPU

Nakamura, Hideo

Proceedings of ANS International Conference on Best Estimate Plus Uncertainties Methods (BEPU 2018) (USB Flash Drive), 8 Pages, 2018/00

no abstracts in English

Evaluation of sodium pool fire and thermal consequence in two-cell configuration

Takata, Takashi; Ohno, Shuji; Tajima, Yuji*

Mechanical Engineering Journal (Internet), 4(3), p.16-00577_1 - 16-00577_11, 2017/06

http://doi.org/10.1299/mej.16-00577

Evaluation of accidental sodium leak, combustion, and its thermal consequence is one of the important issues to be assessed in the field of sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR). The present paper deals with the sodium pool fire and subsequent heat transfer behavior in air atmosphere two-cell geometry both experimentally and analytically because such two-cell configuration is considered as a typical one to possess important characteristic of multi-compartment system seen in an actual plant. As a result of the numerical analysis using a lumped-parameter based zonal model safety analysis code SPHINCS, the applicability of the ventilation model implemented in SPHINCS has been demonstrated. It is also investigated that the buoyancy- driven ventilation is dominant in the experiment.

Development of fuel temperature calculation code for HTGRs

Inaba, Yoshitomo; Nishihara, Tetsuo

Annals of Nuclear Energy, 101, p.383 - 389, 2017/03

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anucene.2016.11.006

In order to ensure the thermal integrity of fuel in High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors (HTGRs), it is necessary that the maximum fuel temperature in normal operation is to be lower than a thermal design target. In the core thermal-hydraulic design of block-type HTGRs, the maximum fuel temperature should be evaluated considering data such as thermal power, core geometry, power density and neutron fluence distributions, and core coolant flow distribution. The fuel temperature calculation code used in the design stage of the High Temperature engineering Test Reactor (HTTR) presupposes to run on UNIX systems, and its operation and execution procedure are complicated and are not user-friendly. Therefore, a new fuel temperature calculation code named FTCC which has a user-friendly system such as a simple and easy operation and execution procedure, was developed. This paper describes calculation objects and models, basic equations, improvement points from the HTTR design code in FTCC, and the result of a validation calculation with FTCC. The calculation result obtained by FTCC provides good agreement with that of the HTTR design code, and then FTCC will be used as one of the design codes for HTGRs. In addition, the effect of cooling forms on the maximum fuel temperature is investigated by using FTCC. As a result, it was found that the effect of center hole cooling for hollow fuel compacts and gapless cooling with monolithic type fuel rods on reducing the temperature is very high.

Thermal mixing characteristics of helium gas in high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, 1; Thermal mixing behavior of helium gas in HTTR

Tochio, Daisuke; Fujimoto, Nozomu

Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 53(3), p.425 - 431, 2016/03

https://doi.org/10.1080/00223131.2015.1054910

The future HTGR is now designed in JAEA. The reactor has many merging points of helium gas with different temperature. It is needed to clear the mixing characteristics of helium gas at the pipe in the HTGR from the viewpoint of structure integrity and temperature control. Previously, the reactor inlet coolant temperature was controlled lower than specific one in the HTTR due to lack of mixing of helium gas in the primary cooling system. Now the control system is improved to use the calculated bulk temperature of reactor inlet helium gas. In this paper, thermal-hydraulic analysis on the primary cooling system of the HTTR was conducted to clarify the mixing behavior of helium gas. As the result, it was confirmed that the mixing behavior of helium gas in the primary cooling system is mainly affected by the aspect ratio of annular flow path, and it is needed to consider the mixing characteristics of helium gas at the piping design of the HTGR.

Evaluation of seawater effects on thermal-hydraulic behavior for severe accident conditions, 2; Heat transfer and flow visualization experiment by using internally heated annulus

Uesawa, Shinichiro; Nagatake, Taku; Jiao, L.; Liu, W.; Takase, Kazuyuki; Yoshida, Hiroyuki

Proceedings of International Conference on Power Engineering 2015 (ICOPE 2015) (CD-ROM), 11 Pages, 2015/11