CFD simulation of interassembly bypass flow in Sodium Fast Reactors

Interassembly flow in Sodium Fast Reactors (SFRs) represents a bypass flow path exterior to the fuel assembly ducts. Heat transferred across this thin gap is an important component of core radial expansion, where the coupling between thermal-fluids, neutronics, and solid mechanics results in time-dependent duct bowing. These geometry changes can constitute a significant portion of the total reactivity response in transients, but are difficult to model in high-fidelity. Interassembly flow is also an important heat transfer mode during natural convection cooling. To improve our understanding of interassembly flow, this paper provides NekRS Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) and Large Eddy Simulations (LES) of the interassembly flow in a 19-bundle fast reactor core. Time-averaged LES compares reasonably well with a k - τ RANS model, though RANS is not able to capture a crossflow which occurs at a large change in flow area between the duct–duct gaps and the open peripheral region. We predict velocity distributions and illustrate a multiscale postprocessing system that can be used to generate coarse-mesh closures for subchannel and porous media tools, and provide a dataset with average velocity for comparison with coarse-mesh tools. • LES and RANS simulations are performed of the interassembly flow in a small-size sodium fast reactor. • The flow is laminar in the duct–duct gaps and turbulent in the peripheral region. • Spatial averaging of the CFD simulations provides data for code-to-code comparison.