Large eddy simulation on turbulent heat transfer in reactor vessel lower head corium pools

Abstract

Due to the high-Rayleigh-number natural convection and strong turbulence in the volumetrically heated corium melt pools, it is difficult to capture the heat transfer characteristics in detail. The Large Eddy Simulation (LES) methods are more and more applicable to nuclear industry and have become powerful tools to analyze the complicated turbulent and multi-phase flows. In this paper, the Wall-Modeled LES (WMLES) method was employed for the simulation of three typical corium pool heat transfer experiments: BALI, LIVE and COPRA experiments. The melt pool temperature and heat flux from numerical simulations were in good comparison with experimental data. Then numerical simulation for the transient formation of two-layer corium pool was performed with prototypical corium to obtain the heat transfer data in reactor situation. There was a distinctive gap between the temperatures in two layers. The heat flux showed a decrease at the two-layer interface and a huge jump at the metal layer side. The thin metal layer on the top at the early stage of the two-layer formation will threaten the vessel integrity.