MOOSE-Based Fast Reactor Core Bowing Capabilities: Coupled Structural Mechanics – Thermal Fluids Demonstration and Related Verification Efforts

Abstract

Under the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy’s Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) Program, an integrated multiphysics approach is being developed to model the core bowing phenomena important to liquid metal-cooled fast reactors. Core bowing is an important passive safety mechanism in liquid metal-cooled fast reactors and involves multiphysics effects including radiation transport, fluid flow, heat transfer, and mechanical response to temperature and flux gradients. Verification and assessment efforts continued on the Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) capabilities relevant for modeling thermo-mechanical core bowing behavior. IAEA Verification Problem 4, which was started in FY23, was further examined with MOOSE capabilities to rectify discrepancies observed in previous years when compared to IAEA benchmark participant data. Meshing and postprocessing capabilities in MOOSE were also advanced by other teams and utilized this year. A thermal fluids-structural mechanical coupling demonstration has performed on 7-assemblyand 19-assembly fast reactor assembly configurations using MOOSE. Subchannel capabilities are used to calculate coolant temperature, and heat conduction capabilities calculate duct wall temperature as well as heat transfer through the inter-assembly gap. Structural mechanical capabilities then deform the mesh, accounting for contact between assemblies, according to the temperature gradients calculated by the thermal solvers. Power distributions are imposed rather than calculated to demonstrate different deformations.