Steady-State Thermal Simulation of Weld Applied to a Practical Axisymmetric Weldment

Steady-state Eulerian analysis on thermal simulation of welds using moving coordinates is known as a very computationally efficient method. This paper presents a method of Eulerian analysis that uses commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. In order to show the practical availability of the Eulerian method, the method is applied to an analysis of a circumferential weld of a core shroud in a boiling water reactor (BWR). In this analysis, the double ellipsoidal power density distribution model proposed by Goldak et al. (1984) is applied for the weld heat source, the temperature dependency of thermal properties is considered, and the effect of latent heat is treated by enthalpy method. Comparison of the analyzed temperature histories at several locations on the surface of the weldment to the measured results shows that the numerical results reproduce the measured results well.