TY - JOUR
T1 - Feasibility of full-core pin resolved CFD simulations of small modular reactor with momentum sources
AU - Fang, Jun
AU - Shaver, Dillon R.
AU - Tomboulides, Ananias
AU - Min, Misun
AU - Fischer, Paul
AU - Lan, Yu Hsiang
AU - Rahaman, Ronald
AU - Romano, Paul
AU - Benhamadouche, Sofiane
AU - Hassan, Yassin A.
AU - Kraus, Adam
AU - Merzari, Elia
N1 - This research was supported by the Exascale Computing Project (ECP), Project Number: 17-SC-20-SC, a collaborative effort of two DOE organizations—the Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration—responsible for the planning and preparation of a capable exascale ecosystem—including software, applications, hardware, advanced system engineering, and early testbed platforms—to support the nation’s exascale computing imperative. We gratefully acknowledge the computing resources provided by the Laboratory Computing Resource Center (LCRC) and the Leadership Computing Facility (LCF) at Argonne National Laboratory. Argonne National Laboratory’s work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-AC02-06CH11357. This research also used resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725.
This research was supported by the Exascale Computing Project (ECP), Project Number: 17-SC-20-SC, a collaborative effort of two DOE organizations—the Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration—responsible for the planning and preparation of a capable exascale ecosystem—including software, applications, hardware, advanced system engineering, and early testbed platforms—to support the nation's exascale computing imperative. We gratefully acknowledge the computing resources provided by the Laboratory Computing Resource Center (LCRC) and the Leadership Computing Facility (LCF) at Argonne National Laboratory. Argonne National Laboratory's work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-AC02-06CH11357. This research also used resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725. The submitted manuscript has been created by UChicago Argonne, LLC, Operator of Argonne National Laboratory (“Argonne”). Argonne, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, is operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. The U.S. Government retains for itself, and others acting on its behalf, a paid-up, nonexclusive, irrevocable worldwide license in said article to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies to the public, and perform publicly and display publicly, by or on behalf of the Government.
The submitted manuscript has been created by UChicago Argonne, LLC, Operator of Argonne National Laboratory (“Argonne”). Argonne, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, is operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. The U.S. Government retains for itself, and others acting on its behalf, a paid-up, nonexclusive, irrevocable worldwide license in said article to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies to the public, and perform publicly and display publicly, by or on behalf of the Government.
PY - 2021/7
Y1 - 2021/7
N2 - Complex flow structure interactions and heat transfer processes take place in nuclear reactor cores. Given the extreme pressure/temperature and radioactive conditions inside the core, numerical simulations offer an attractive and sometimes more feasible approach to study the related flow and heat transfer phenomena in addition to the experiments. Under the Exascale Computing Project, the full-core simulation of a small modular reactor (SMR) has been pursued coupling Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and neutronics. A key aspect of the modeling of SMR fuel assemblies is the presence of spacer grids and the mixing promoted by mixing vanes or the equivalent. A reduced order methodology is adopted based on momentum sources to mimic the mixing of the vanes. The momentum sources have been carefully calibrated with detailed Large Eddy Simulations (LES) of spacer grids performed with Nek5000. Modeling the spacer grid and mixing vanes (SGMV) effect without body-fitted computational grid avoids the excessive costs in resolving the local geometric details, and thus supports the simulation to be scaled up to the full core. Besides the progress on momentum source modeling, this paper also features the first full-core pin resolved CFD simulation ever performed to the authors’ knowledge. This represents a significant advancement in capability for the CFD of nuclear reactors, which will hopefully serve as an inspiration for further integrating high-fidelity numerical simulations in actual engineering designs.
AB - Complex flow structure interactions and heat transfer processes take place in nuclear reactor cores. Given the extreme pressure/temperature and radioactive conditions inside the core, numerical simulations offer an attractive and sometimes more feasible approach to study the related flow and heat transfer phenomena in addition to the experiments. Under the Exascale Computing Project, the full-core simulation of a small modular reactor (SMR) has been pursued coupling Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and neutronics. A key aspect of the modeling of SMR fuel assemblies is the presence of spacer grids and the mixing promoted by mixing vanes or the equivalent. A reduced order methodology is adopted based on momentum sources to mimic the mixing of the vanes. The momentum sources have been carefully calibrated with detailed Large Eddy Simulations (LES) of spacer grids performed with Nek5000. Modeling the spacer grid and mixing vanes (SGMV) effect without body-fitted computational grid avoids the excessive costs in resolving the local geometric details, and thus supports the simulation to be scaled up to the full core. Besides the progress on momentum source modeling, this paper also features the first full-core pin resolved CFD simulation ever performed to the authors’ knowledge. This represents a significant advancement in capability for the CFD of nuclear reactors, which will hopefully serve as an inspiration for further integrating high-fidelity numerical simulations in actual engineering designs.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.nucengdes.2021.111143
DO - 10.1016/j.nucengdes.2021.111143
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85103937722
SN - 0029-5493
VL - 378
JO - Nuclear Engineering and Design
JF - Nuclear Engineering and Design
M1 - 111143
ER -