Next Generation Safety Analysis Methods for SFRs—(4) Development of a Computational Framework on Fluid-Solid Mixture Flow Simulations for the COMPASS Code

The COMPASS code is designed based on the moving particle semi-implicit (MPS) method to simulate various complex mesoscale phenomena relevant to core disruptive accidents (CDAs) of sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs). The MPS method, which is a fully Lagrangian method, can be extended for fluid-solid mixture flow simulations in a straightforward approach. In this study, a computational framework for fluid-solid mixture flow simulations was developed for the COMPASS code. In the present framework, the passively moving solid (PMS) model, which is originally proposed to describe the motion of a rigid body in a fluid, used to simulate hydrodynamic interactions between fluid and solids. In addition, mechanical interactions between solids were modeled by the distinct element method (DEM). Since the typical time step size in DEM calculation, which uses an explicit time integration scheme, is much smaller than that in MPS calculation, a multi-time-step algorithm was introduced to couple these two calculations. In order to verify the proposed computational framework for fluid-solid mixture flow simulations, a series of experiments of water-dam break with multiple solid rods was simulated using the COMPASS code. It was found that simulations considering only fluid-solid interactions using the PMS model can not reasonably represent typical behaviors of solid rods observed in the experiments. However, results of simulations taking account of solid-solid interactions using DEM as well as fluid-solid ones were in good agreement with experimental observations. It was demonstrated that the present computational framework enhances the capability of the COMPASS code for mesoscale simulations of fluid-solid mixture flow phenomena relevant to CDAs of SFRs. To improve the computational efficiency for fluid-solid mixture flow simulations, it will be necessary to optimize the time step size used in DEM calculations by adjusting DEM parameters based on additional experiments and numerical tests.