3 × 3 rod bundle investigations, CFD single-phase numerical simulations

Highlights: • CFD simulations of the flow around a 3 × 3 rod bundle were conducted. • Single-phase calculations performed as pre-investigation of future boiling applications. • The influence of the geometry details (inlet vessel, grid spacers) was investigated. • Turbulent patterns of these flows were analyzed (secondary flows, vortices, flow asymmetries). - Abstract: The work here presented has been performed in the framework of a research project aimed to investigate two-phase (boiling) flows in pressurized water reactors (PWR). CFD investigations of a rod bundle have been conducted while a new experimental facility (ROFEX) was constructed in Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) for the generation of quality validation data. The apparatus consists of a 3 × 3 rod bundle inside a Plexiglas vertical pipe. The results summarized in this paper are considered as a pre-investigation, being the final goal to be able to predict accurately boiling water flows under high pressure around rods. For this purpose, three steps were defined: analysis of single-phase flows in such geometry, analysis of the multiphase flow when using a refrigerant as a working fluid and, finally, the analysis of a multiphase flow using water. The single-phase approach allows gaining experience regarding the turbulence behaviour of the flow, while the multiphase investigation of the refrigerant simplifies the experimental conditions since it is possible to get boiling situations at lower pressure level. At the moment of writing this paper, the authors were focused on the first step (single-phase flows at low pressure), since this not only made possible to better understand the turbulence in that geometry, but it also resulted in valuable feedback to the experimentalists on improving the construction of the facility. In parallel, HZDR researchers have been developing a new tomography measurement technique to measure gas content in multiphase flows