Book Description
The thesis focuses on the numerical simulation of sodium flow in wire wrapped sub-assembly of Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor (SFR).First calculations were carried out by a time averaging approach called RANS (Reynolds- Averaged Navier-Stokes equations) using industrial code STAR-CCM+. This study gives a clear understanding of heat transfer between the fuel pin and sodium. The main variables of the macroscopic flow are in agreement with correlations used hitherto. However, to obtain a detailed description of temperature fluctuations around the spacer wire, more accurate approaches like LES (Large Eddy Simulation) and DNS (Direct Numerical Simulation) are clearly needed. For LES approach, the code TRIO_U was used and for the DNS approach, a research code was used. These approaches require a considerable long calculation time which leads to the need of representative but simplified geometry.The DNS approach enables us to study the thermal hydraulics of sodium that has very low Prandtl number inducing a very different behavior of thermal field in comparison to the hydraulic field. The LES approach is used to study the local region of sub-assembly. This study shows that spacer wire generates the local hot spots (~20°C) on the wake side of spacer wire with respect to the sodium flow at the region of contact with the fuel pin. Temperature fluctuations around the spacer wire are low (~1-2°C). Under nominal operation, the spectral analysis shows the absence of any dominant peak for temperature oscillations at low frequency (2-10Hz). The obtained spectra of temperature oscillations can be used as an input for further mechanical studies to determine its impact on the solid structures.
