Flow-Induced Grid-to-Rod Fretting Test and Simulation for NFI PWR Fuel Assembly

A long-term flow-induced vibration and wear test was performed for a full-scale 17×17 PWR fuel mockup, and the test results were compared with numerical simulations. The flow-induced vibration on a fuel assembly or fuel rods may cause Grid-to-Rod Fretting (GTRF) and result in the leakage of fuel rods in PWRs. GTRF involves non-linear vibration of a fuel rod due to the excitation force induced by coolant flow around a fuel rod. So, the numerical simulation is performed by VITRAN (Vibration Transient Analysis Non-linear) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). VITRAN code was developed by Westinghouse to simulate fuel rod flow induced vibration and GTRF. In this paper, it was confirmed that the code can reproduce GTRF wear for NFI fuel assembly. CFD calculation is performed to obtain the axial and lateral flow velocity around the fuel rods, reflecting detailed geometries of fuel assembly components like bottom nozzle, spacer grids. The numerical simulation reasonably reproduced the vibration and wear test for NFI fuel assembly.