CFD studies on thermal hydraulics of spallation targets

Full text of publication follows: Due to the fast advances in computer hardware as well as software in recent years, more and more interests have been aroused to use computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technology in nuclear engineering and designs. During recent many years, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (FZK) has been actively involved in the thermal hydraulic analysis and design of spallation targets. To understand the thermal hydraulic behaviors of spallation targets very detailed simulations are necessary because of their complex geometries, complicated boundary conditions such as spallation heat distributions, and very strict design limits. A CFD simulation is believed to be the best for this purpose even though the validation of CFD codes are not perfectly completed yet in specific topics like liquid metal heat transfer. The research activities on three spallation targets (i.e., MEGAPIE, TRADE, and XADS targets) are currently very active in Europe in order to consolidate the European ADS road-map. In the thermal hydraulics point of view, two kinds of the research activities, i.e., (1) numerical design and (2) experimental work, are required to achieve the objectives of these targets. It should be noted that CFD studies play important role on both kinds of two activities. A preliminary design of a target can be achieved by sophisticated CFD analysis and pre-and-post analyses of an experimental work using a CFD code help the design of the test section of the experiment as well as the analysis of the experimental results. The present paper gives an overview about the recent CFD studies relating to thermal hydraulics of the spallation targets recently involved in FZK. It covers numerical design studies as well as CFD studies to support experimental works. The CFX code has been adopted for the studies. Main recent results for the selected examples performed by FZK are presented and discussed with their specific lessons learned. (authors)