Porous media modeling for thermal analysis of storage cask with bird screen meshes

Air inlet and outlet ducts are installed at the bottom and top of the concrete overpack. Bird screen meshes are installed at the air inlet and outlet ducts to prevent the intrusion of debris from the external environment. The presence of this screens introduce an additional resistance to air flow through the ducts. Porous media model can be used to simulate the flow effects in the bird screen meshes. The purpose of this study is to develop the porous media model for the simulation of bird screen meshes and to prove the validation of the porous media model. Porous media model was developed to simplify the bird screen meshes. Flow resistance coefficients for porous media model were derived from the fluid flow analysis. The analysis temperatures for the storage cask were slightly higher than the test results. Therefore, the reliability and conservatism for the porous model have been demonstrated. The porous media model developed in this study can be used to estimate the temperatures for concrete cask with bird screen meshes