CATHARE-3: A first computation of a 3-inch break Loss-Of-Coolant Accident using both Cartesian and cylindrical 3D-meshes modeling of a PWR vessel - CEA - Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives Accéder directement au contenu
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2017

CATHARE-3: A first computation of a 3-inch break Loss-Of-Coolant Accident using both Cartesian and cylindrical 3D-meshes modeling of a PWR vessel

Résumé

CATHARE-3 is the new version of the French thermal-hydraulic code for safety analysis of nuclear reactors. It is developed in the framework of the NEPTUNE project launched by the CEA, EDF, AREVANP and IRSN in 2001. CATHARE-3 V2.0 was delivered by December 2016. The paper will focus on a particular test-case, showing the new abilities of CATHARE-3. The PWR vessel has been described using seven 3D-modules, with a Cartesian coordinate meshing for the core (with one cell per assembly in a horizontal section) and cylindrical coordinate meshing for the other vessel components (downcomer, upper and lower plena …). Using this modeling, a 2,800s simulation of a 3-inchbreak Loss-Of-Coolant Accident (LOCA) in one of the PWR cold legs has been run and compared to results with a CATHARE-2 and CATHARE-3 “classical” modeling for the vessel (with only cylindrical grids). This computation has been made possible by the development of non-conformal junctions between Cartesian coordinates and cylindrical coordinates. A similar computation is not possible with CATHARE2 because non-conformal junctions are not available. Many analytical verification test-cases of the nonconformal junctions have also been made, checking the mass-flow and energy-flow conservation at the non-conformal junctions on various configurations. These test-cases, showing that an improvement for momentum equations is needed, are also presented in the paper. This 3D-vessel modeling also shows the abilities of CATHARE-3 to manage a large number of 3D-cells (about 7000 instead of less than 1000 for a typical CATHARE-2 3D-vessel modeling) thanks to the new numerical methods available in CATHARE-3. This computation demonstrates the potential of CATHARE-3, which should reach the status of an industrial tool available for safety studies in 2019.
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Dates et versions

cea-02434036 , version 1 (09-01-2020)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : cea-02434036 , version 1

Citer

R. Prea, V. Figerou, A. Mekkas, A. Ruby. CATHARE-3: A first computation of a 3-inch break Loss-Of-Coolant Accident using both Cartesian and cylindrical 3D-meshes modeling of a PWR vessel. NURETH-17, Sep 2017, Xi'An, China. ⟨cea-02434036⟩

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