The reduced-order model of 5 × 5 fuel rod bundles

Abstract

The fuel rod bundles are the core part of pressurized water reactors (PWRs), and its heat transfer characteristics directly impact the safety of PWRs. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of 5 × 5 fuel rod bundles with a spacer grid is established, and the numerical simulation results are in excellent agreement with the experimental results. Then, the effects of four turbulence models, namely shear stress transport model, standard k–ε model, re-normalization group k–ε model, and realizable k–ε model on the thermal-hydraulic characteristics of the 5 × 5 fuel rod bundles are systematically investigated. Furthermore, two data-driven methods, namely proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) and dynamic mode decomposition (DMD), are used to analyze the flow fields of the 5 × 5 fuel rod bundles. The two methods can extract key modes or features to enhance the comprehension and description of the dynamic behaviors within the flow fields of 5 × 5 fuel rod bundles. Finally, two reduced-order models (ROMs), called the POD-radial basis function neural network surrogate model and DMD method, are constructed, which can enable rapid prediction of the flow fields for 5 × 5 fuel rod bundles with high accuracy. The CFD simulation results presented in this paper can provide valuable insights for studying the thermal-hydraulic characteristics of the 5 × 5 fuel rod bundles. The two ROMs proposed in this paper can significantly reduce the computational costs associated with studying the thermal-hydraulic characteristics of 5 × 5 fuel rod bundles.