3D Simulation of Molten Metal Freezing Behaviour Using Finite Volume Particle Method

Understanding the freezing behavior of molten metal in flow channels is of importance for severe accident analysis of liquid metal reactors. In order to simulate its fundamental behavior, a 3D fluid dynamics code was developed using Finite Volume Particle (FVP) method, which is one of the moving particle methods. This method, which is fully Lagrangian particle method, assumes that each moving particle occupies certain volume. The governing equations that determine the phase change process are solved by discretizing its gradient and Laplacian terms with the moving particles. The motions of each particle and heat transfer between particles are calculated through interaction with its neighboring particles. A series of experiments for fundamental freezing behavior of molten metal during penetration on to a metal structure was also performed to provide data for the validation of the developed code. The comparison between simulation and experimental results indicates that the present 3D code using the FVP method can successfully reproduce the observed freezing process such as molten metal temperature profile, frozen molten metal shape and its penetration length on the metal structure.