3D thermal and thermalhydraulic coupling for high heat flux components safety assessment

One sided high heat flux is the major feature of heat generated from the plasma of a fusion reactor. This heat is removed by sub-cooled water flow. For one sided heat loads, different heat transfer regimes can be present. The coupling of thermal and hydraulic computation is necessary to produce a detailed description of the flow and the thermal pattern in the cooling pipes. This paper describes the coupling method and presents numerical results which are compared to experimental data with intend to validate the coupling. (authors)