Study of a low Mach nuclear core model for two-phase flows with phase transition I: stiffened gas law

Abstract

In this paper, we are interested in modelling the flow of the coolant (water) in a nuclear reactor core. To this end, we use a monodimensional low Mach number model supplemented with the stiffened gas law. We take into account potential phase transitions by a single equation of state which describes both pure and mixture phases. In some particular cases, we give analytical steady and/or unsteady solutions which provide qualitative information about the flow. In the second part of the paper, we introduce two variants of a numerical scheme based on the method of characteristics to simulate this model. We study and verify numerically the properties of these schemes. We finally present numerical simulations of a loss of flow accident (LOFA) induced by a coolant pump trip event.