Eulerian Two-Phase Boiling Model Development for Boiling Water Reactor Fuel Assembly Applications

摘要

Analyses of multiphase flow in nuclear reactor cores and assemblies have traditionally relied upon correlation-based sub-channel analysis codes. While these codes provide reliable predictive capabilities for the channel-averaged behavior, they lack the resolution needed to simulate detailed intra-channel effects, such as localized sub-cooled boiling or flow around spacer grid elements, which may have significant local impacts on fuel performance. The applicability of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to the analysis of these effects has been limited by the absence of computationally-tractable phenomenological models for two-phase boiling flows within those codes. However, recent advances in CFD modeling tools coupled with the growth of massively parallel computational platforms provides the potential for high-resolution modeling of two-phase flow phenomena in nuclear reactor assemblies.