NEAMS IRP Challenge Problem 2: Thermal Striping of Reactor Internals

Emilio Baglietto, John Acierno, Annalisa Manera, Quynh M. Nguyen, Victor Petrov, Monica Pham, Yu Jou Wang, Yue Jin, Jinyong Feng, Wayne Strasser, Dillon Shaver, Elia Merzari

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

Coolant flow in advanced reactors can be characterized by oscillatory mixing of non-isothermal liquid coolant streams, and is a potential cause of thermal fatigue damage in fuel and reactor components. The NEAMS IRP Challenge Problem 2 (CP2) seeks to develop an accurate, yet computationally affordable, turbulence modeling option for thermal-striping predictions. The designs of upper internal structures, as well as lower plena and heat exchanger configurations, are strongly affected by the ability to efficiently mix the coolant streams and further affects the material selection as well as operation and maintenance of the systems. This challenge problem generalizes specific needs related to the TerraPower and General Atomics designs by developing a set of benchmarks in order to advance, demonstrate and quantify the accuracy of the thermal striping modeling approach. The focus of the activities is to advance and demonstrate a modeling practice capable of accurately representing the performance of the structural reactor components under the influence of thermal striping. Assessment against adiabatic quasi-2D jets striping has demonstrated great promise for the proposed turbulence approaches, with 2 orders of magnitude acceleration from the reference Large Eddy Simulation (LES) solution. More recent efforts have extended the quasi-2D validation to diabatic conditions, leveraging the demonstrated accuracy of the highly resolved LES methods, and with a new set of experimental data for heated parallel round jets. Further upscaling through the use of reduced order models is being evaluated, and a two-step machine learning approach has been demonstrated on thermal striping for 3 parallel jets.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 20th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics, NURETH 2023
PublisherAmerican Nuclear Society
Pages4464-4475
Number of pages12
ISBN (Electronic)9780894487934
DOIs
StatePublished - 2023
Event20th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics, NURETH 2023 - Washington, United States
Duration: Aug 20 2023Aug 25 2023

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 20th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics, NURETH 2023

Conference

Conference20th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics, NURETH 2023
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityWashington
Period8/20/238/25/23

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Nuclear Energy and Engineering
  • Instrumentation

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