Natural Convection/Radiation Heat Transfer Simulations of an Enclosed Array of Vertical Rods

Experiments performed by others measured the temperature of twelve heated vertical rods within a constant temperature, internally finned cylindrical enclosure. Measurements were performed for a range of air and helium pressures and a range of rod heat generation rates. In the current work, three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics simulations of natural convection and radiation heat transfer within this domain were conducted to benchmark the simulation techniques. These calculations accurately reproduced the local and average temperatures when the heat generation rate was sufficiently low that the velocity field is steady. Future simulations will be used to design experiments that model spent nuclear fuel within non-isothermal cells of storage packages.