GeN-Foam: a novel OpenFOAM® based multi-physics solver for 2D/3D transient analysis of nuclear reactors

Fiorina, Carlo; Clifford, Ivor; Aufiero, Manuele; Mikityuk, Konstantin

doi:10.1016/j.nucengdes.2015.05.035

Cited by 127 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…GeN-Foam is an OpenFOAM [3] based multi-physics code developed at the Laboratory for Reactor Physics and Systems Behaviour (LRS), EPFL and at the Paul Scherrer Institut. While a complete code description can be found in [4], [5], [6], the goal of the current section is to provide an overall introduction. This will be instrumental for further discussions regarding the benchmark model.…”

Section: Computational Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Simplified Numerical Benchmark for Pool-Type Sodium Fast Reactors

Radman

Fiorina

Mikityuk

et al. 2018

Volume 4: Nuclear Safety, Security, and Cyber Security; Computer Code Verification and Validation

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The current work presents a simplified benchmark for a pool-type Sodium Fast Reactor based on a 2D (r-z) geometry for testing tightly-coupled spatial neutron transport, thermal-hydraulics and thermal-mechanics modeling. The new benchmark is motivated by development of the multi-physics OpenFOAM-based GeN-Foam code at the Laboratory for Reactor Physics and Systems Behaviour at the EPFL, Switzerland, and the FAST code system by the Advanced Nuclear Systems group at the Paul Scherrer Institut, Switzerland. Aiming at the improvement of modeling and code-to-code comparison, the benchmark could prove useful for developers of tightly-coupled multi-physics simulation tools for reactor analysis. The benchmark specification and the solutions obtained with GeN-Foam are presented and discussed in the paper.

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Section: Computational Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Simplified Numerical Benchmark for Pool-Type Sodium Fast Reactors

Radman

Fiorina

Mikityuk

et al. 2018

Volume 4: Nuclear Safety, Security, and Cyber Security; Computer Code Verification and Validation

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“…The GeN-Foam multi-physics solver is an OpenFOAMbased solver for reactor transient analysis that couples [5]: a multi-group neutron diffusion / SP3 sub-solver; a fineand coarse-mesh thermal-hydraulics sub-solver; a thermalmechanics sub-solver; and a simple sub-scale fuel model.…”

Section: The Gen-foam Multi-physics Solvermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In order to accelerate the solution and to avoid initial stability problems, a predictor has been included for the temperature field. In particular, the fuel and clad temperatures are calculated at the first iteration by employing a simple finite difference method like the one employed in the basic fuel temperature model of GeN-Foam [5]. The matrix obtained at each Newton iteration is solved using a Gaussian elimination method with pivoting.…”

Section: Re-implementation Of the 1d Solvermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It interacts with other solvers as follows: it takes the values of coolant temperature, coolant pressure, coolant-clad heat transfer coefficient, and fuel volumetric power from the thermal-hydraulic sub-solver; it solves for burnup, temperatures, stresses and strains in fuel and clad; it provides back to the thermal-hydraulic sub-solver the power flowing from the fuel to the coolant; and it provides to the neutronic sub-solver temperature and expansion of fuel and clad. The coupling scheme follows the same logic employed for the existing simplified solver for fuel and clad temperatures [5] and reported in Fig. 4 .…”

Section: Integration Into Gen-foammentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As far as the neutronics and thermal-hydraulics are concerned, the same computational assumptions as in Ref. [5] have been made. As regards the fuel behavior, 6 rods have been simulated for each assembly (corresponding to 2700 rods in the core), with 10 axial slices per rod (Fig.…”

Section: Application To the Esfrmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Creation of an OpenFOAM Fuel Performance Class Based on FRED and Integration Into the GeN-Foam Multi-Physics Code

Fiorina

Pautz

Mikityuk

2018

Volume 3: Nuclear Fuel and Material, Reactor Physics, and Transport Theory

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The FRED code is an in-house tool developed at the Paul Scherrer Institut for the so-called 1.5-D nuclear fuel performance analysis. In order to extend its field of application, this code has been re-implemented as a class of the OpenFOAM numerical library. A first objective of this re-implementation is to provide this tool with the parallel scalability necessary for full-core analyses. In addition, the use of OpenFOAM as base library allows for a straightforward interface with the standard Open-FOAM CFD solvers, as well as with the several OpenFOAM-based applications developed by the nuclear engineering community. In this paper, the newly developed FRED-based Open-FOAM class has been integrated in the GeN-Foam multi-physics code mainly developed at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne and at the Paul Scherrer Institut. The paper presents the details of both the re-implementation of the FRED code and of its integration in GeN-Foam. The performances and parallel scalability of the tool are preliminary investigated and an example of application is provided by performing a full-core multi-physics analysis of the European Sodium Fast Reactor.

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