Performance comparison of the commercial CFD software for the prediction of turbulent flow through tube bundles

Because turbulent flow through tube bundles can be found in many important industrial applications, such as PWR reactor, steam generator, CANDU calandria and lower plenum of the VHTR, extensive studies have been made both experimentally and numerically. Although recently licensing applications supported by commercial CFD software are increasing, there is no commercial CFD software which obtains a licensing from the regulatory body until now. Therefore, it is necessary to perform the systematic assessment for the prediction performance of the commercial CFD software. The main objective of the present study is to numerically simulate turbulent flow through both staggered and in line tube bundle using the two popular commercial CFD software, ANSYS CFX and FLUENT and to compare the simulation results with the experimental data for the assessment of these software's prediction performance