Application of an Integral Turbulence Model to Close the Model of an Anisotropic Porous Body as Applied to Rod Structures

Abstract

In practice, often devices are ordered rod structures consisting of a large number of rods. Heat exchangers, fuel assemblies of nuclear reactors, and their cores in the case of using caseless assemblies are examples of such devices. Simulation of heat and mass transfer processes in such devices in porous-body approximation can significantly reduce the required resources compared to computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approaches. The paper describes an integral turbulence model developed for defining anisotropic model parameters of a porous body. The parameters of the integral turbulence model were determined by numerical simulations for assemblies of smooth rods, assemblies with spacer grids, and wire-wrapped fuel assemblies. The results of modeling the flow of a liquid metal coolant in an experimental fuel assembly with local blocking of its flow section in anisotropic porous-body approximation using an integral turbulence model are described. The possibility of using the model of an anisotropic porous body with the integral model of turbulence to describe thermal-hydraulic processes during fluid flow in rod structures is confirmed.