Assessment of a tube-based bundle CHF prediction method using a subchannel code

Abstract

At the conceptual design stage for advanced water-cooled reactors (AWCRs), a general critical heat flux (CHF) prediction method with a wide applicable range and reasonable accuracy is essential to the thermal-hydraulic design and safety analysis. A basic idea for general CHF prediction is to utilize the tube-based CHF models covering wide applicable ranges with the help of supplementary terms for bundle effects. In this study, feasibility assessments have been performed with the bundle CHF data relevant to pressurized water reactors. A subchannel analysis is adopted in order to be able to consider the geometrical variations properly even in untested fuel bundle geometries. As a result, a CHF look-up table method (i.e., the use of a round tube CHF table with appropriate bundle effect factors) turns out to be a promising way to fulfill the needs in many aspects among some selected correlations and theoretical models. Though improvements of the supplementary factors, especially for the cold wall and the bundle heated length effects, are desirable to make better predictions, the tube-based bundle CHF prediction method clearly shows a potential as a general CHF predictor.