Verification and Validation of COMSOL Magnetohydrodynamic Models for Liquid Metal Breeding Blankets Technologies

Abstract

Liquid metal breeding blankets are extensively studied in nuclear fusion. In the main proposed systems, the Water Cooled Lithium Lead (WCLL) and the Dual Coolant Lithium Lead (DCLL), the liquid metal flows under an intense transverse magnetic field, for which a magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) effect is produced. The result is the alteration of all the flow features and the increase in the pressure drops. Although the latter issue can be evaluated with system models, 3D MHD codes are of extreme importance both in the design phase and for safety analyses. To test the reliability of COMSOL Multiphysics for the development of MHD models, a method for verification and validation of magnetohydrodynamic codes is followed. The benchmark problems solved regard steady state, fully developed flows in rectangular ducts, non-isothermal flows, flow in a spatially varying transverse magnetic field and two different unsteady turbulent problems, quasi-two-dimensional MHD turbulent flow and 3D turbulent MHD flow entering a magnetic obstacle. The computed results show good agreement with the reference solutions for all the addressed problems, suggesting that COMSOL can be used as software to study liquid metal MHD problems under the flow regimes typical of fusion power reactors.

Dynamic Characteristics of Transverse-Magnetic-Field Induced Arc for Plasma-Jet-Triggered Protective Gas Switch in Hybrid UHVDC System

“…There is still no evident investigation found that analysed the effects of the PJT-GS operation conditions. Such a correlation is then detailly studied in the present work using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-based technologies [13][14][15][16][17][18][19] to research the performance of PJT-GS systematically. By means of establishing a theoretical arc model that needs to be compared with the experimental results, one of the objectives is to accelerate the optimization design of the PJT-GS.…”

Exact Symmetric Solutions of MHD Casson Fluid Using Chemically Reactive Flow with Generalized Boundary Conditions

“…They used the homotopy analysis method to calculate the governing equation and Mathematica software (Wolfram Mathematica, New Jersey, NJ, United State) to provide a graphical illustration of the velocity gradient, temperature, and concentration gradient of the Casson model. Although research on the Casson model is ongoing, we include some related studies based on heat transfer [25][26][27][28][29], fractional models of fluids with magnetic field [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40], and some others [41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54] herein. Motivated by the above discussion, we analyzed an analytic solution of incompressible and magnetic Casson fluid subjected to temperature and concentration dependence within a porous-surfaced plate.…”