Numerical study on benchmark analysis of NACIE-UP facility with uniform and non-uniform power distribution

Abstract

The NACIE-UP (NAtural Circulation Experiment-Upgrade) facility is located at the ENEA Brasimone Research Centre (Italy) and is designed to investigate the thermal–hydraulic properties of Lead-Bismuth Eutectic (LBE) within a wire-spaced assembly under uniform and non-uniform power distribution conditions. This benchmark exercise proposed by ENEA is based on previous experiment results, intending for development and validation of CFD/TH system code, stand-alone CFD simulation, etc. In this study, the thermal–hydraulic characteristics of Fuel Pin Simulator (FPS) are analyzed, which contains inlet bend and outlet section. ANSYS Fluent solver is applied with the COUPLE algorithm of RANS SSTk-ω model. Cheng&Tak correlation and computational conditions are implanted into Fluent in the form of UDFs. Moreover, calculations were performed for ADP10, ADP06 and ADP07. The results show that the RMSEs of ADP10SS1 and ADP10SS2 are 2.52 K and 3.69 K, 7.05 K and 8.48 K for ADP06SS1 and ADP06SS2, respectively, which indicate that the adopted models have good prediction ability for the temperature of the experimental conditions. Meanwhile, the heat transfer characteristics of different sub-channels and sections are investigated and compared with the correlations of Ushakov, Mikityuk, Kazimi and Carelli. The experimental and simulation values of the uniformly heated ADP10 are in good agreement with the correlations, while there is a large deviation for the non-uniformly heated ADP06. Therefore, it is necessary to develop new correlations for the heat transfer characteristics of LBE in wire-wrapped bundle. Above all, this study provides quantitative and qualitative analysis for verification and validation of CFD/TH system code and stand-alone CFD simulation.