Numerical Modeling of Turbulent Mixing in Connected Nuclear Fuel Subchannels with Appendages

Abstract

This paper presents an extension of the numerical study of turbulent mixing in a gap-connected twin-subchannel geometry presented by Ballyk et al. [1]. The body of related work available in the literature has shown that complex quasi-periodic structures are formed in the near gap region due to flow instability contributing significantly to mixing between subchannels. The influence of appendages or obstructions in the gap region on subchannel mixing has not been broadly reported in the literature. The current study extends the work from [1] to include the effect of appendages on modeling and characterizing flow and mixing within twin-subchannel geometries.