Analysis of the accelerator-driven system fuel assembly during the steam generator tube rupture accident

Abstract

China is developing an ADS (Accelerator-Driven System) research device named the China initiative accelerator-driven system (CiADS). When performing a safety analysis of this new proposed design, the core behavior during the steam generator tube rupture (SGTR) accident has to be investigated. The purpose of our research in this paper is to investigate the impact from different heating conditions and inlet steam contents on steam bubble and coolant temperature distributions in ADS fuel assemblies during a postulated SGTR accident by performing necessary computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. In this research, the open source CFD calculation software OpenFOAM, together with the two-phase VOF (Volume of Fluid) model were used to simulate the steam bubble behavior in heavy liquid metal flow. The model was validated with experimental results published in the open literature. Based on our simulation results, it can be noticed that steam bubbles will accumulate at the periphery region of fuel assemblies, and the maximum temperature in fuel assembly will not overwhelm its working limit during the postulated SGTR accident when the steam content at assembly inlet is less than 15%.