Large Eddy Simulation of a Helical Coil Steam Generator Test Section

Abstract

The helical coil steam generator (HCSG) is a compact heat exchanger that can have high heat transfer even when the pressure drop is low. This makes it advantageous in small modular reactors and high-temperature reactor designs. In order to investigate the fluid phenomena around these helical banked tubes, a test section was built at Texas A&M University to represent flow across two half-rods within HCSG. This study focuses on the validation of large eddy simulation (LES) for this particular geometry. Pressure tap and particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements have been recorded at an inlet Reynolds number of 8643, and both mean and fluctuating data is compared with the numerical results. The highly scalable spectral-element code Nek5000 has been used to produce the LES calculations. First, simulations of varying polynomial order expansions are made to determine the spatial resolution required to capture the turbulent scales. Then, simulations with different inlet conditions are compared with experimental data. The pressure drop shows good agreement with pressure tap measurements while velocity shows similar characteristics with PIV. Furthermore, the components of the Reynolds stresses and modes from proper orthogonal decomposition have been developed to validate the physics captured.