Numerical simulation of large hydraulic systems using a multi-domain approach

DARIO GODINO; DAMIAN RAMAJO; CORZO, SANTIAGO F.; ANTONELLA COSTA; JOHAN SARACHE PIÑA; CLAUBIA PEREIRA

Santos

Congreso; INAC 2019 - International Nuclear Atlantic Conference; 2019

Brazilian Nuclear Energy Association

The computational simulation of large scale reactors is currently limited by the high computational cost. For this reason, the study of operational conditions or even prolonged events became impossible to analyze. The use of coupling domains to simplified the problem looks like a proper alternative to settle the issue. In the present paper, a multi-domain coupling 3D/0D methodology is proposed into theFinite Volume OpenFOAM software environment devoted to solve large hydraulic systems. Unlike of the broadly literature about this methods, even in the nuclear engineering community, most of these couple two different software?s in a fully explicit way. This means, both software?s shared the necessary data in an iterative way where generally, one code run as a master and the other is the slave. In the other hand, the benefit of solve different domain approaches into the same software is the capability to adopt monolithic algorithms. The current methodology is used to simulate operational condition and an event condition in the TRIGA MARK I IPR-R1 reactor for two different power conditions. In this case, the external pool reactor circuit is geometrically simplified as 0D domain and the pool reactor is represented in a three-dimensional form. This strategy aims to solve the complete system for relative large transients