Benchmark Simulation of Turbulent Flow through a Staggered Tube Bundle to Support CFD as a Reactor Design Tool. Part I: SRANS CFD Simulation

Abstract

Time-invariant and time-variant numerical simulations of flow through a staggered tube bundle array, idealizing the lower plenum (LP) subsystem configuration of a very high temperature reactor (VHTR), were performed. In Part I, the CFD prediction of fully periodic isothermal tube-bundle flow using steady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (SRANS) equations with common turbulence models was investigated at a Reynolds number (Re) of 1.8 × 104, based on the tube diameter and inlet velocity. Three first-order turbulence models, standard k-ε turbulence, renormalized group (RNG) k-ε, and shear stress transport (SST) k-ω models, and a second-order turbulence model, Reynolds stress model (RSM), were considered. A comparison of CFD simulations and experiment results was made at five locations along (x, y) coordinates. The SRANS simulation showed that no universal model predicted the turbulent Reynolds stresses, and generally, the results were marginal to poor. This is because these models cannot accurately model the periodic, spatiotemporal nature of the complex wake flow structure.