Development of Explainable Data-Driven Turbulence Models with Application to Liquid Fuel Nuclear Reactors - Archive ouverte HAL
Article Dans Une Revue Energies Année : 2022

Development of Explainable Data-Driven Turbulence Models with Application to Liquid Fuel Nuclear Reactors

Mauricio Tano
  • Fonction : Auteur
Pablo Rubiolo
Laboratoire de Physique Subatomique et de Cosmologie

Résumé

Liquid fuel nuclear reactors offer innovative possibilities in terms of nuclear reactor designs and passive safety systems. Molten Salts Reactors (MSRs) with a fast spectrum are a particular type of these reactors using liquid fuel. MSFRs often involve large open cavities in their core in which the liquid fuel circulates at a high speed to transport the heat generated by the nuclear reactions into the heat exchangers. This high-speed flow yields a turbulent field with large Reynolds numbers in the reactor core. Since the nuclear power, the neutron precursor’s transport and the thermal exchanges are strongly coupled in the MSFR’s core cavity, having accurate turbulent models for the liquid fuel flow is necessary to avoid introducing significant errors in the numerical simulations of these reactors. Nonetheless, high-accuracy simulations of the turbulent flow field in the reactor cavity of these reactors are usually prohibitively expensive in terms of computational resources, especially when performing multiphysics numerical calculations. Therefore, in this work, we propose a novel method using a modified genetic algorithm to optimize the calculation of the Reynolds Shear Stress Tensor (RST) used for turbulence modeling. The proposed optimization methodology is particularly suitable for advanced liquid fuel reactors such as the MSFRs since it allows the development of high-accuracy but still low-computational-cost turbulence models for the liquid fuel. We demonstrate the applicability of this approach by developing high accuracy Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) models (averaged flow error less than 5%) for a low and a large aspect ratio in a Backward-Facing Step (BFS) section particularly challenging for RANS models. The newly developed turbulence models better capture the flow field after the boundary layer tipping, over the extent of the recirculation bubble, and near the boundary layer reattachment region in both BFS configurations. The main reason for these improvements is that the developed models better capture the flow field turbulent anisotropy in the bulk region of the BFS. Then, we illustrate the interest in using this turbulence modeling approach for the case of an MSFR by quantifying the impact of the turbulence modeling on the reactor key parameters.

Domaines

Physique Nucléaire Expérimentale [nucl-ex]

INSPIRE HEP  : Connectez-vous pour contacter le contributeur

https://hal.science/hal-03833869

Soumis le : vendredi 28 octobre 2022-16:40:21

Dernière modification le : mercredi 18 décembre 2024-10:16:07

Consulter le texte intégral

Dates et versions

hal-03833869 , version 1 (28-10-2022)

Identifiants

Citer

Mauricio Tano, Pablo Rubiolo. Development of Explainable Data-Driven Turbulence Models with Application to Liquid Fuel Nuclear Reactors. Energies, 2022, 15 (19), pp.), 6861. ⟨10.3390/en15196861⟩. ⟨hal-03833869⟩

Exporter

BibTeX XML-TEI Dublin Core DC Terms EndNote DataCite

Collections

IN2P3 UGA LPSC CNRS
16 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

More