Best Practices for Axial Flow-Induced Vibration (FIV) Simulation in Nuclear Applications

Fretting wear due to flow-induced vibration (FIV) remains a primary cause of fuel failure in light water nuclear reactors. In the study of axial FIV, i.e., FIV caused by axial flows, three vibration characteristics, namely natural frequency, damping ratio, and root-mean-square (RMS) amplitude, are critical for mitigating fretting wear by avoiding resonance, maximising overdamping, and preventing large-amplitude instability motion, respectively. This paper presents a set of best practices for simulating axial FIV with a focus on predicting these parameters based on a URANS-FSI numerical framework, utilising high-Reynolds-number Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) turbulence modelling and two-way fluid–structure interaction (FSI) coupling. This strategy enables accurate and efficient prediction of vibration parameters and offers promising scalability for full-scale nuclear fuel assembly applications. Validation is performed against a semi-empirical model to predict RMS amplitude and experimental benchmarking. The validation experiments involve two setups: vibration of a square beam with fixed and roller-supported ends in annular flow tested at Vattenfall AB, and self-excited vibration of a cantilever beam in annular flow tested at the University of Manchester. The study recommends best practices for numerical schemes, mesh strategies, and convergence criteria, tailored to improve the accuracy and efficiency for each validated parameter.