Development of a CFD Model for Transient Simulations of a Small Lead Cooled Reactor: Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop in Fuel Channels

Abstract

A method to model the entire primary circuit of a small lead cooled reactor using CFD is presented. Key components of the circuit are modelled with a relatively coarse mesh and appropriate heat source and momentum source, in an analogous way to system codes. Those components include the fuel channels, the pump and the steam generator. This paper presents some details of the approach used to model heat transfer and pressure loss in the fuel channels. Heat transfer in the fuel is solved by a custom code outside of the CFD software and thus coupling between the custom code and CFD is required. Pressure loss is implemented as a custom momentum source using a function for the friction factor that was derived from empirical correlations.