Description of internal flow problems by a boundary integral method with dipole panels

In reactor safety studies the failure of single components is postulated or sudden accident loadings are assumed and the consequences are investigated. Often as a first consequence highly transient three dimensional flow problems occur. In contrast to classical flow problems, in most of the above cases the fluid velocities are relatively small whereas the accelerations assume high values. As a consequence both, viscosity effects and dynamic pressures which are proportional to the square of the fluid velocities are usually negligible. For cases, where the excitation times are considerably longer than the times necessary for a wave to traverse characteristic regions of the fluid field, also the fluid compressibility is negligible. Under these conditions boundary integral methods are an appropriate tool to deal with the problem. Flow singularities are distributed over the fluid boundaries in such a way that pressure and velocity fields are obtained which satisfy the boundary conditions. In order to facilitate the numerical treatment the fluid boundaries are approximated by a finite number of panels with uniform singularity distributions on each of them. Consequently the pressure and velocity field of the given problem may be obtained by superposition of the corresponding fields due to these panels with their singularity intensities as unknown factors. Then satisfying the boundary conditions in so many boundary points as panels have been introduced, yields a system of linear equations which in general allows for a unique determination of the unknown intensities. (orig./RW)