The Feasibility of Multidimensional CFD Applied to Calandria System in the Moderator of CANDU-6 PHWR Using Commercial and Open-Source Codes

Abstract EN

The moderator system of CANDU, a prototype of PHWR (pressurized heavy-water reactor), has been modeled in multidimension for the computation based on CFD (computational fluid dynamics) technique.

Three CFD codes are tested in modeled hydrothermal systems of heavy-water reactors.

Commercial codes, COMSOL Multiphysics and ANSYS-CFX with OpenFOAM, an open-source code, are introduced for the various simplified and practical problems.

All the implemented computational codes are tested for a benchmark problem of STERN laboratory experiment with a precise modeling of tubes, compared with each other as well as the measured data and a porous model based on the experimental correlation of pressure drop.

Also the effect of turbulence model is discussed for these low Reynolds number flows.

As a result, they are shown to be successful for the analysis of three-dimensional numerical models related to the calandria system of CANDU reactors.