Published 4 issues per year
ISSN Print: 2151-4798
ISSN Online: 2151-562X
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NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF THERMAL FLUID DYNAMICS IN THE PBMR CORE
ABSTRACT
The Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) is a type of pebble bed reactor developed by the South African company PBMR (Pty) Ltd. The PBMR is a gas-cooled, graphite-moderated nuclear reactor. Thermal-fluid phenomena in the PBMR core at various porosities (0.35, 0.4, and 0.45) and inlet velocities (2.5, 3.5, and 4.5 m/s) are numerically investigated by developing a two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics model. The k−ε model was used to predict the turbulence and the semi-implicit method for pressure-linked equations algorithm was used to handle the velocity−pressure coupling. The results show that when the inlet velocity is increased from 2.5 to 4.5 m/s, the pressure drop and the heat transfer coefficient increase, but the coolant temperature decreases. Also, it was found that when the porosity is increased from 0.35 to 0.45, the pressure drop decreases but the heat transfer coefficient increases.
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Latifi M. S., Colangelo G., Starace G., A CFD study on the effect of size of fuel sphere on PBR core, Experimental and Computational Multiphase Flow, 2, 2, 2020. Crossref