RANS and LES investigations of vertical flows in the fuel passages of gas-cooled nuclear reactors

Coolant flows in the cores of current gas-cooled nuclear reactors consist of ascending vertical flows in a large number of parallel passages. Under post-trip conditions such heated turbulent flows may be significantly modified from the forced convection condition by the action of buoyancy, and the thermal-hydraulic regime is no longer one of pure forced convection. These modifications are primarily associated with changes to the turbulence structure, and indeed flow laminarization may occur. In the laminarization situation heat transfer rates may be as low as 40% of those in the corresponding forced convection case. The heat transfer performance of such 'mixed' convection flows is investigated here using a range of refined Reynolds-Averaged-Navier-Stokes (RANS) turbulence models. While all belong to the broad class of Eddy Viscosity Models (EVMs), the various RANS closures have different physical parameterizations and might therefore be expected to show different responses to externally-imposed conditions. Comparison is made against experimental and Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) data. In addition, Large Eddy Simulation (LES) results have been generated as part of the study. Three different CFD codes have been employed in the work: 'CONVERT', 'STAR-CD', and 'Code-Saturne, which are respectively in-house, commercial, and industrial packages. It is found that the early EVM scheme of Launder and Sharma [1] is in the closest agreement with consistently-normalized DNS results for the ratio of mixed-to-forced convection Nusselt number {Nu/Nu0). However, in relation to DNS and experimental data for forced convection Nusselt number, other models perform better than the Launder-Sharma scheme. The present investigation has revealed discrepancies between direct-simulation, experimental, and the current LES studies. Copyright © 2008 by ASME.