ICONE11-36404 COMPARISON OF THE NUMERICAL RESULTS OF EUROPLEXUS WITH THE MARS EXPERIMENT

Abstract

In case of a Hypothetical Core Disruptive Accident (HCDA) in a Liquid Metal Reactor, the interaction between fuel and liquid sodium creates a high pressure gas bubble in the core. The violent expansion of this bubble loads the vessel and the internal structures, whose deformation is important. The experimental test MARS simulates a HCDA in a small scale mock-up containing all the significant internal components of a Fast Breeder Reactor. The test-facility is filled with water topped by an argon blanket and the explosion is generated by an explosive charge. Owing to the symmetry of the mock-up, an axisymmetrical representation is chosen for the numerical simulation of the MARS test-facility with the EUROPLEXUS computer code. The external structures are modelled by shells or massive structures and the main internal structures were described with a classical shell model. The peripheral structures are homogenised with the coolant. The paper presents a synthesis of the results of the numerical simulation and a comparison with the experimental results and the ones obtained in previous numerical simulations.