Advanced three-dimensional two-phase flow simulation tools for application to reactor safety (ASTAR)

Abstract

This paper summarizes the cumulative work undertaken in the frame of the EU shared-cost action “ASTAR Project”—the current status and future perspectives in the field of advanced numerical simulation of three-dimensional two-phase flow processes. This 3-year running project, which started in September 2000, involves seven partner institutes from around Europe. Specific emphasis is given to the further development of characteristic-based upwind differencing (also called “hyperbolic”) numerical methods and their application to transient two-phase flow. The paper summarizes the common basis adopted for the physical and mathematical modelling of two-phase flow in the form of a single-pressure “two-fluid” model and the various numerical solution techniques developed by the partners. Several benchmark exercises are presented which have been used as verification and assessment procedures for comparing the different modelling and numerical approaches. Comments on the suitability, accuracy, numerical stability, algorithmic robustness and computational efficiency serve as indicators for the possible extension of these methods to future code development activities. Two further tasks of the ASTAR project dealt with the production of high quality experimental field data in the LINX facility of PSI, for the validation of CFD models for two-phase bubbly flow, and the coupling of a two-phase CFD module with a system code. Details of these tasks have been published separately, and will not be recalled in this paper.