Clarification of complex phenomena in nuclear plants present status and future trend of fluid analysis by cellular automaton methods

Since most of complex phenomena comprise of various elementary processes e.g., fluid flow, heat conduction, phase transition, chemical reaction, structural deformation, and these processes interact each other nonlinearly, the complex phenomena cannot be easily clarified by such the conventional topdown approaches as describe phenomena by using differential equations. In contrast to the topdown approaches where the differential equations are located at the top of the analysis procedures, these are bottomup approaches where phenomena are reproduced by local interaction of particles on cells. Cellular automata are one of the typical bottomup approaches. The basic principle, computer simulation results, and massively parallel processors for the cellular automata are reviewed and perspectives of the bottomup approach are discussed on clarification of the complex phenomena in nuclear plants. The computer simulations mainly deal with fluid flows and phase interfacial phenomena. (author)