%0 Conference Proceedings
%A Holt, L.
%A Rohde, U.
%A Seidl, M.
%A Schubert, A.
%A Van Uffelen, P.
%A Macián-Juan, R.
%T Two-Way Coupling Between the Reactor Dynamics Code DYN3D and the Fuel Performance Code TRANSURANUS at Assembly Level
%V Volume 5: Innovative Nuclear Power Plant Design and New Technology Application; Student Paper Competition
%B 2014 22nd International Conference on Nuclear Engineering
%D 2014
%R 10.1115/ICONE22-30812
%1 V005T17A052
%X In the last two decades the reactor dynamics code DYN3D was coupled to thermal hydraulics system codes, a sub-channel thermal hydraulics code and CFD codes. These earlier developed code systems allow modeling of the thermal hydraulics phenomena occurring during reactor transients and accidents in greater detail. Still these code systems lack a sufficiently sophisticated fuel behavior model, which is able i.e. to take into account the fission gas behavior during normal operation, off-normal conditions and transients. To our knowledge a two-way coupling to a fuel performance code hasn’t so far been reported in the open literature for calculating a full core with detailed and well validated fuel behavior models.A new two-way coupling approach between DYN3D and the fuel performance code TRANSURANUS is presented. In the coupling, DYN3D provides the time-dependent rod power and thermal hydraulics conditions to TRANSURANUS, which in turn transfers parameters like fuel temperature and cladding temperature back to DYN3D. The main part of the development is a general TRANSURANUS coupling interface that is applicable for linking of any other reactor dynamics codes, thermal hydraulics system codes and sub-channel codes to TRANSURANUS. Beside its generality, other features of this interface are the application at either fuel assembly or fuel rod level, one-way or two-way coupling, automatic switching from steady to transient conditions in TRANSURANUS (including update of the material properties etc.), writing of all TRANSURANUS output files and the possibility of manual pre- and post-calculations with TRANSURANUS in standalone mode. The TRANSURANUS code can be used in combination with this coupling interface in various scenarios: different fuel compositions in the reactor types BWR, PWR, VVER, HWR and FBR, considering time scales from milliseconds (i.e. RIA) over seconds/ minutes (i.e. LOCA) to years (i.e. normal operation) and thence different reactor states.Results of DYN3D-TRANSURANUS are shown for a control rod ejection transient in a German PWR. In particular, it appears that for all burn-up levels the two-way coupling approach systematically calculates higher maximum values for the node fuel enthalpy (max. difference of 46 J/g) and node centerline fuel temperature (max. difference of 181 K), compared to DYN3D standalone in best estimate calculations. These differences can be completely explained by the more detailed TRANSURANUS modeling of fuel thermal conductivity, radial power density profile and heat transfer in the gap. As known from fuel performance codes, the modeling of the heat transfer in the gap is sensitive and causes also larger differences in case of low burn-up.The numerical convergence for DYN3D-TRANSURANUS is quick and stable. The coupled code system can improve the assessment of safety criteria, at a reasonable computational cost with a CPU time of less than seven hours without parallelization.
%[ 4/25/2024
%U https://doi.org/10.1115/ICONE22-30812