An Advanced TRACE Modeling Approach: Automatic Connection of 3D Cartesian and Cylindrical VESSEL Components in Integral Plant Models

Kanglong Zhang and Victor Hugo Sanchez-Espinoza
Additional contact information
Kanglong Zhang: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany
Victor Hugo Sanchez-Espinoza: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 12, 1-18

Abstract: Best estimate system thermal-hydraulic codes in the nuclear engineering community, e.g., TRACE, RELAP3D, CATHARE-3, etc., were extended with 3D coarse-mesh components to better describe the 3D Thermal-Hydraulic (TH) phenomena taking place within the Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) and the core. The RPV is usually shaped like a cylinder while the core is mostly a cube. Hence, the TRACE code is equipped with a Cylindrical VESSEL and a Cartesian VESSEL. The former one is to represent the RPV (including core), pressurizer, and steam generator. The latter one is more appropriate to represent the core. The two components are connected by two Vessel-Junctions (VJ) at the core inlet and outlet. Due to the different nodalization between the two VESSELs, the analyst needs to do repetitive and error-prone work defining the cell-to-cell junctions and their TH parameters. To facilitate this process, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has developed an automatic approach based on a mesh-constructing and field-mapping library, namely the MEDCoupling. These new capabilities of TRACE are demonstrated by the analysis of the coolant mixing for an academic case and the AP1000 reactor.

Keywords: TRACE; Cylindrical VESSEL; Cartesian VESSEL; automatic modeling; MEDCoupling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/12/4384/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/12/4384/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:12:p:4384-:d:840122

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().