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  4. GEN-FOAM: An OpenFOAM (R)-Based Multi-physics Solver for Nuclear Reactor Analysis
 
conference paper

GEN-FOAM: An OpenFOAM (R)-Based Multi-physics Solver for Nuclear Reactor Analysis

Fiorina, Carlo  
January 1, 2019
Openfoam(R)
11th Workshop on Open Source Field Operation And Manipulation (OpenFOAM)

A multi-physics solver for nuclear reactor analysis, named GeN-Foam (Generalized Nuclear Foam), has been developed by the Laboratory for Reactor Physics and System Behavior at the EPFL and at the Paul Scherrer Institut (Switzerland). The developed solver couples: a multigroup neutron diffusion or SP3 subsolver; a thermal-hydraulics sub-solver based on the standard k-epsilon turbulence model, but extended to coarse-mesh applications through the use of a porous medium approach for user-selected cell zones; a displacement-based thermal-mechanics subsolver to evaluate thermal deformations of structures; and a finite-difference subscale fuel model that can be used in coarse-mesh simulations of the core to evaluate the local temperature profile in fuel and cladding. A first-order implicit Euler scheme with an adaptive time step is used for time integration, and the coupling between equations is semi-implicit, using the Picard iteration. Three different meshes are used for thermal-hydraulics, thermal-mechanics and neutron diffusion, and fields are projected between different meshes through a standard volume-averaging technique. GeN-Foam features a general applicability to pin- or plate-fuel, or homogeneous nuclear reactors. Its application in several cases of interest has shown stable numerical behavior, the possibility of obtaining reliable results for traditional reactor types, as well as the possibility of investigating non-conventional reactors, whose analysis cannot be easily carried out using nuclear legacy codes.

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Type
conference paper
DOI
10.1007/978-3-319-60846-4_16
Web of Science ID

WOS:000529377600016

Author(s)
Fiorina, Carlo  
Date Issued

2019-01-01

Publisher

SPRINGER INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING AG

Publisher place

Cham

Published in
Openfoam(R)
ISBN of the book

978-3-319-60846-4

978-3-319-60845-7

Start page

211

End page

221

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LRS  
Event nameEvent placeEvent date
11th Workshop on Open Source Field Operation And Manipulation (OpenFOAM)

Guimaraes, PORTUGAL

Jun 26-30, 2016

Available on Infoscience
May 14, 2020
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/168713
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