Evaluation of flow accelerated corrosion by coupled analysis of corrosion and flow dynamics (2), flow dynamics calculations for determining mixing factors and mass transfer coefficients

In order to predict and mitigate flow accelerated corrosion (FAC) of carbon steel piping in PWR and BWR secondary systems, computer program packages for evaluating FAC have been developed by coupling one through three dimensional (1-3D) computational flow dynamics (CFD) models and corrosion models. To evaluate corrosive conditions, e.g., oxygen concentration and electrochemical corrosion potential (ECP) along the flow path, flow pattern and temperature in each elemental volume were obtained with 1D computational flow dynamics (CFD) codes. Precise flow turbulence and mass transfer coefficients at the structure surface were calculated with 3D CFD codes to determine wall thinning rates. One of the engineering options is application of k-ε calculation as a 3D CFD code, which has limitation of detail evaluation of flow distribution at very surface of large scale piping. A combination of k-ε calculation and wall function was proposed to evaluate precise distribution of mass transfer coefficients with reasonable CPU volume and computing time and, at the same time, reasonable accuracy. (author)