Fluid-structure interaction modelling of a PWR fuel assembly subjected to axial flow

Guillaume Ricciardi (1, 2)

1 DTN - Département Technologie Nucléaire
2 CEA-DES (ex-DEN) - CEA-Direction des Energies (ex-Direction de l'Energie Nucléaire)

Nuclear industry needs tools to design reactor cores in case of earthquake. A fluid-structure model simulating the response of the core to a seismic excitation have been developed. Full scale tests considering one fuel assembly are performed to identify coefficients (added mass and damping) that will be used as inputs in the models. Tests showed that the axial water flow induced an added stiffness. In the paper, an expression of the model accounting for the fluid in the fuel assembly with a porous media model and in the bypasses with a leakage flow model is developed. Numerical simulations are compared to experiments and showed good agreement.

Keywords: fuel assembly; modelling; fluid-structure interaction; added stiffness

Domains: Physics [physics]; Nuclear Theory [nucl-th]; Physics [physics]; Nuclear Experiment [nucl-ex]

Guillaume Ricciardi. Fluid-structure interaction modelling of a PWR fuel assembly subjected to axial flow. Journal of Fluids and Structures, 2016, 62, pp.156-171. ⟨10.1016/j.jfluidstructs.2016.01.006⟩. ⟨cea-02384447⟩