Comparison and uncertainty quantification of two-fluid models for bubbly flows with NEPTUNE_CFD and STAR-CCM+

Abstract

The nuclear industry is interested in better understanding the behavior of turbulent boiling flows and in using modern computational tools for the design and analysis of advanced fuels and reactors and for simulation and study of mitigation strategies in accident scenarios. Such interests serve as drivers for the advancement of the 3-dimensional multiphase Computational Fluid Dynamics approach. A pair of parallel efforts have been underway in Europe and in the United States, the NEPTUNE and CASL programs respectively, that aim at delivering advanced simulation tools that will enable improved safety and economy of operations of the reactor fleet. Results from a collaboration between these two efforts, aimed at advancing the understanding of multiphase closures for pressurized water reactor (PWR) application, are presented. Particular attention is paid to the assessment and analysis of the different physical models implemented in NEPTUNE_CFD and STAR-CCM+ codes used in the NEPTUNE and the CASL programs respectively, for application to turbulent two-phase bubbly flows. The experiments conducted by Liu and Bankoff (Liu, 1989; Liu and Bankoff 1993a and b) are selected for benchmarking, and predictions from the two codes are presented for a broad range of flow conditions and with void fractions varying between 0 and 50%. Comparison of the CFD simulations and experimental measurements reveals that a similar level of accuracy is achieved in the two codes. The differences in both sets of closure models are analyzed, and their capability to capture the main features of the flow over a wide range of experimental conditions are discussed. This analysis paves the way for future improvements of existing two-fluid models. The benchmarks are further leveraged for a systematic study of the propagation of model uncertainties. This provides insights into mechanisms that lead to complex interactions between individual closures (of the different phenomena) in the multiphase CFD approach. As such, it is seen that the multi-CFD-code approach and the principled uncertainty quantification approach are both of great value in assessing the limitations and the level of maturity of multiphase hydrodynamic closures.

Application of artificial intelligence technologies and big data computing for nuclear power plants control: a review

“…It is also employed to model natural circulation flow in the PWR fuel (Ni et al, 2021), estimation of the countercurrent flow in the downcomer (Li et al, 2023a), analysis of loss of flow accidents (Corzo et al, 2023), and study rod ejection accidents (El-Sahlamy et al, 2022). Further, the NPPs data is generated from the STAR-CCM+ CFD simulation tool for several applications (Marfaing et al, 2018;Benavides et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2021;Yang et al, 2023). Besides, the big data of the NPPs could be collected from education and training simulators.…”

CFD Simulation of isothermal upward two-phase flow in a vertical annulus using interfacial area transport equation

“…A similar approach was considered by Feng & Bolotnov (2017) to simulate the wall forces due to the drainage around the bubbles close to the walls. Recently, the Shaver & Podowski (2015) correlation was adopted by Colombo & Fairweather (2019), Sugrue et al (2017), andMarfaing et al (2018), providing satisfactory accuracy for void fraction and gas velocity profiles when compared to experimental data. In order to incorporate the effects of Clc, a user-defined function (UDF) was programmed and implemented in the CFD model.…”

Modeling of fiber bridging in fluid flow for well stimulation applications

“…The model geometry is built and meshed with the engineering software Star-CCM+ (Siemens 2017) in which all the computation and post-processing of the subsequent numerical results are performed. This software tool has demonstrated great capability to simulate multiphase flow with good accuracy in comparison with experiments (Marafaing et al 2018;Tang et al 2015). The system of incompressible fluid flow governing equations is numerically solved employing the finite volume method as a space discretization technique with an algebraic segregated solver.…”