The Development and Validation of a Natural Circulation Analysis Code for Marine Reactors

Abstract

A one-dimensional two-fluid model in a noninertial frame of reference is set up by implementing the dynamics of mass point in the noninertial frame into the two-fluid model in an inertial frame. The body force term in the momentum equation is treated as a time dependent function and the inertial force induced by ship three-dimensional motions is added into this term. Staggered mesh, finite volume method, semi-implicit first order upwind scheme and SOR method are used to discretize and solve two-phase mass, momentum and energy conservation equations. A code named PNCMC for studying natural circulation of marine reactor under motion condition is developed based on the difference equations. Single-phase natural circulation experiments under rolling condition performed in INET and two-phase natural circulation experiments under rolling condition are used to validate PNCMC. The validation of results indicates PNCMC is able to investigate the single-phase and two-phase natural circulation under rolling motion.