Post-test calculations of UPTF experiments with ANSYS CFX

The last decade has seen an increasing use of three-dimensional CFD codes to predict steady state and transient flows in nuclear reactors because a number of important phenomena such as pressurized thermal shocks, coolant mixing, and thermal striping cannot be predicted by traditional one-dimensional system codes with the required accuracy and spatial resolution.
The nuclear industry now also recognizes that CFD codes have reached the desired level of maturity (at least for single-phase applications) for them to be used as part of the Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) design process, and it is the objective the research and development teams to assess the current capabilities of such codes in this regard, and contribute to the technology advance in respect to their verification and validation. CFD is already well-established in addressing certain safety issues in NPPs, as reported and discussed at various international workshops. The development, verification and validation of CFD codes in respect to NPP design necessitates further work on the complex physical modelling processes involved, and on the development of efficient numerical schemes needed to solve the basic equations. In parallel, it remains an overriding necessity to benchmark the performance of the CFD codes, and for this experimental databases need to be established, first for separate-effect tests but especially for full-size integral tests.
In order to validate the CFD Code ANSYS CFX for reactor safety relevant flow phenomena it is essential to use the UPTF experiments, since they are full scale tests. All other separate effect test rigs and test facilities like ROCOM (Höhne, 2000) are scaled. Scaling parameters of flow conditions are one of the still open topics for the use of CFD codes in nuclear reactor safety. Three UPTF tests were selected and post-test calculation were performed. The major focus was analyzing the qualitative flow behavior.