Objective
The objective of this Program is to develop “best practice” guidance for CFD users that can be applied to future assembly and core designs.

Round Robin Exercise
Participants will apply their own CFD codes and methods against the NESTOR data; a heated 5X5 rod bundle experiment that was well-defined and instrumented.  Participants will be provided all necessary information and data from the NESTOR project. 

Participants will meet initially to review the conduct of the round robin exercise and then twice thereafter to review and assess results of their analyses (and those of the other participants) against the actual data generated during the experiments.  Two separate exercises will be conducted analyzing different 5X5 bundle geometries.  It is EPRI’s intent to keep the round robin exercise as open as possible so that a free exchange of information and ideas are exchanged.  It is anticipated this round robin exercise will take approximately 18 months to complete.

Background
During the development of EPRI’s PWR Fuel Cladding Corrosion and Crud Guidelines in 2008, it became evident that CFD is an important analytical tool to evaluate the susceptibility of corrosion product deposition on nuclear fuel under certain assembly and core design scenarios.

Because CFD is not a mature science as it relates to evaluating very local thermal hydraulic conditions on fuel rods under high temperature PWR assembly conditions, it is prudent to calibrate various CFD codes with high fidelity experimental data. Such data are available from the NESTOR project (sponsored and completed recently by CEA, EDF, and EPRI).

Accordingly, an approach has been developed to benchmark current CFD methods against high fidelity experimental data – with the overall objective to improve confidence in CFD code-based predictions.  Further details of this approach are given in the enclosed document, where you will find how the round robin benchmark program will be administered as well as a general description of the facilities (EDF’s MANIVEL Loop and CEA’s OMEGA loop) used in the NESTOR experiments.

Accomodations, Directions & Venue Information

Contact Us
For questions, please contact Jeff Deshon, EPRI Program Manager or Catherine Catanach, Texas A&M University Department of Nuclear Engineering.

Please refer back to this site for new information regarding the meeting.