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CFD analysis of a CiADS fuel assembly during the steam generator tube rupture accident based on the LBEsteamEulerFoam

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Abstract

Steam generator tube rupture (SGTR) accident is an important scenario needed to be considered in the safety analysis of lead-based fast reactors. When the steam generator tube breaks close to the main pump, water vapor will enter the reactor core, resulting in a two-phase flow of heavy liquid metal and water vapor in fuel assemblies. The thermal-hydraulic problems caused by the SGTR accident may seriously threaten reactor core’s safety performance. In this paper, the open-source CFD calculation software OpenFOAM was used to encapsulate the improved Euler method into the self-developed solver LBEsteamEulerFoam. By changing different heating boundary conditions and inlet coolant types, the two-phase flow in the fuel assembly with different inlet gas content was simulated under various accident conditions. The calculation results show that the water vapor may accumulate in edge and corner channels. With the increase in inlet water vapor content, outlet coolant velocity increases gradually. When the inlet water vapor content is more than 15%, the outlet coolant temperature rises sharply with strong temperature fluctuation. When the inlet water vapor content is in the range of 5–20%, the upper part of the fuel assembly will gradually accumulate to form large bubbles. Compared with the VOF method, Euler method has higher computational efficiency. However, Euler method may cause an underestimation of the void fraction, so it still needs to be calibrated with future experimental data of the two-phase flow in fuel assembly.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Science Data Bank at https://www.doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.j00186.00220 and https://cstr.cn/31253.11.sciencedb.j00186.00220.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Modern Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Yun-Xiang Li, Lu Meng, Song Li, Zi-Nan Huang, Di-Si Wang, Bo Liu & You-Peng Zhang

  2. Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Tian-Ji Peng, Lu Zhang & Wei Jiang

  3. School of Nuclear Science and Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Tian-Ji Peng

  4. Advanced Energy Science and Technology Guangdong Laboratory, Huizhou, 516003, China

    Tian-Ji Peng

  5. School of Nuclear Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Xing-Kang Su

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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Yun-Xiang Li, Lu Meng, Zi-Nan Huang, Song Li, Di-Si Wang, Bo Liu, You-Peng Zhang, Tian-Ji Peng, Lu Zhang, Xing-Kang Su, and Wei Jiang. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Yun-Xiang Li, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to You-Peng Zhang.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Additional information

This work was supported partly by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China (No. 2020YFB1902100) and the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization (No. GYQJ-2018-2-02).

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Li, YX., Meng, L., Li, S. et al. CFD analysis of a CiADS fuel assembly during the steam generator tube rupture accident based on the LBEsteamEulerFoam. NUCL SCI TECH 34, 157 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-023-01312-1

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