Design of a single-phase PTS numerical experiment for a reference Direct Numerical Simulation

Abstract

The integrity assessment of the Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) is considered to be an important issue for lifetime extension of nuclear reactors. A severe transient that can threaten the integrity of the RPV is the existence of a Pressurized Thermal Shock (PTS) during a Loss-of-Coolant Accident (LOCA). A PTS consists of a rapid cooling of the RPV wall under pressurized conditions that may induce the criticality of existing or postulated defects inside the vessel wall. The most severe PTS event has been identified by Emergency Core Cooling (ECC) injection during a LOCA. The traditional one-dimensional system codes fail to reliably predict the complex three-dimensional thermal mixing phenomena in the downcomer occurring during the ECC injection. Hence, CFD can bring real benefits in terms of more realistic and more predictive capabilities. However, to gain trust in the application of CFD modelling for PTS, a comprehensive validation programme is necessary. In the absence of detailed experimental data for the RPV cooling during ECC injection, high fidelity Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) databases constitute a valid alternative and can serve as a reference.The aim of this work is to design a numerical experiment aimed to generate a high quality reference DNS database for a simplified PTS scenario. This takes into account the turbulent mixing in the downcomer and the evolution of the temperature distribution for both structures and fluid during a single-phase flow PTS scenario. In spite of simplifications, such a DNS analysis represents a very demanding application. A priori, it should be demonstrated that all the relevant turbulent scales will be fully resolved, which requires a huge computational power. A wide range of Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) calculations are performed in order to determine a realistic PTS computational domain. Furthermore, the resulting numerical experiment is optimized in terms of geometry, boundary conditions, and physical properties.