Optimization of inlet plenum of A PBMR using surrogate modeling

The purpose of present work is to optimize the design of inlet plenum of PBMR type gas cooled nuclear reactor numerically using a combining of three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) analysis and surrogate modeling technique. Shear stress transport (SST) turbulence model is used as a turbulence closure. Three geometric design variables are selected, namely, rising channel diameter to plenum height ratio, aspect ratio of the plenum cross section, and inlet port angle. The objective function is defined as a linear combination of uniformity of three-dimensional flow distribution term and pressure drop in the inlet plenum and rising channels of PBMR term with a weighting factor. Twenty design points are selected using Latin-hypercube method of design of experiment and objective function values are obtained at each design point using RANS solver. (author)