Numerical investigation of flow-induced forces in the rods bundle

Abstract

The numerical modelling of cross-flow through the rods bundle with triangular arrangement has been done to analyse flow-induced forces on the rod located in the middle of the bundle. Significant problems of rods in the bundle during the operational time of the system can be caused by the cross-flow. At the same time, it is known that the behaviour of the system is strongly related to many parameters such as bundle geometry, flow, rods support and others. Therefore, there is needed to investigate characteristics of each type of typical bundles. In this paper is analysed flow-induced hydrodynamic forces in closely-packed rods bundle using Computational Fluid Dynamics. Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equations were solved using Finite Volume discretization. The impact of the size of the computational domain and the number of rows in it was investigated to find the optimal case for the numerical modelling. Obtained results were compared with references from literature and experimental data. Reynolds number effect on the test cylinder depending on the domain size and the bundle asymmetry impact on flow-induced force were investigated as well.