Application study of adaptive mesh refinement method on unsteady wake vortex analysis

Alzahrani, H.*; Sakai, Takaaki*; Matsushita, Kentaro; Ezure, Toshiki; Tanaka, Masaaki

Proceedings of 20th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (NURETH-20) (Internet), p.1262 - 1275, 2023/08

https://dx.doi.org/10.13182/NURETH20-40794

Development of evaluation method for cover gas entrainment by vortices generated at free surface in upper plenum of sodium-cooled fast reactor is required, and an evaluation method by predicting vortices from flow velocity distribution obtained by CFD analysis is developed. In this study, Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) method is examined to improve efficiency of CFD analysis. Initial mesh was refined with two indexes: the first index (Index-1) is when the second invariant, Q, of velocity gradient tensor is negative and the second one (Index-2) is pressure gradient index added to Index-1. As a result of applying AMR method to unsteady vortices system with a flat plate and performing transient analyses with refined meshes, the result of pressure distribution and velocity around the flat plate in mesh using Index-2 was similar to the result of all refined mesh. It was also confirmed that vortices generation and growth was better simulated by refining meshes around separation area.