A thermohydraulic study on the AP1000 fuel assembly using computational fluid dynamics code

A Thermohydraulic Study on the AP1000-EU Fuel Assembly Using Computational Fluid Dynamics Code. A thermohydraulic study has been carried out on the AP1000-EU reactor core fuel assembly, using computational fluid dynamics code. To improve the ability of human resources in understanding the design of nuclear power plants, a complete reactor core fuel design characteristic is needed. A thermohydraulic study of reactor core fuel was carried out to determine the thermohydraulic parameter value data, which is one of the important factors needed in the safety analysis of reactor operations. The purpose of this research is to study the thermohydraulic parameters of the complete reactor core fuel assembly including the temperature distribution of the fuel meat, cladding, and cooling fluid for the fuel assembly as a constituent of the AP1000-EU reactor core, using the CFD code. The design of API1000-EU has thermal power of 3400 MWt, the number of fuel element is 157 pieces, with an operating pressure of 15.1 MPa. As a first step, the core model being studied is in the form of the fuel assembly at the position of G-9 with a power factor varying from 1.124 to 1.396. Each of a fuel assembly consists of 264 fuel rods with a diameter of 0.95 cm and a fuel rod length of 426.72 cm. For considering the grid requirement for CFD Code, the geometry model to be studied is created by equivalence of the actual model. The results of the study, which include the value of the reactor core temperature distribution parameter, will be compared with the results of other studies using the Cobra EN code. Furthermore, the results of the two studies were validated with the AP1000-EU reactor core design data.first, second, and third level headings.