Development of a CFD Analysis Plan for the First VHTR Standard Problem

Data from a scaled model of a portion of the lower plenum of the helium-cooled very high temperature reactor (VHTR) are under consideration for acceptance as a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) validation data set or standard problem. A CFD analysis will help determine if the scaled model is a suitable geometry for validation data. The present article describes the development of an analysis plan for the CFD model. The plan examines the boundary conditions that should be used, the extent of the computational domain that should be included and which turbulence models need not be examined against the data. Calculations are made for a closely related 2D geometry to address these issues. It was found that a CFD model that includes only the inside of the scaled model in its computational domain is adequate for CFD calculations. The realizable k∼ε model was found not to be suitable for this problem because it did not predict vortex-shedding.