Viet-Anh Phung

Input Calibration and Validation of RELAP5 Against CIRCUS-IV Single Channel Tests on Natural Circulation Two-Phase Flow Instability

RELAP5 is a system thermal-hydraulic code that is used to perform safety analysis on nuclear reactors. Since the code is based on steady state, two-phase flow regime maps, there is a concern that RELAP5 may provide significant errors for rapid transient conditions. In this work, the capability of RELAP5 code to predict the oscillatory behavior of a natural circulation driven, two-phase flow at low pressure is investigated. The simulations are compared with a series of experiments that were performed in the CIRCUS-IV facility at the Delft University of Technology. For this purpose, we developed a procedure for calibration of the input and code validation. The procedure employs (i) multiple parameters measured in different regimes, (ii) independent consideration of the subsections of the loop, and (iii) assessment of importance of the uncertain input parameters. We found that predicted system parameters are less sensitive to variations of the uncertain input and boundary conditions in high frequency oscillations regime. It is shown that calculation results overlap experimental values, except for the high frequency oscillations regime where the maximum inlet flow rate was overestimated. This finding agrees with the idea that steady state, two-phase flow regime maps might be one of the possible reasons for the discrepancy in case of rapid transients in two-phase systems.

Prediction of Flow Regimes and Thermal Hydraulic Parameters in Two-Phase Natural Circulation by RELAP5 and TRACE Codes

In earlier study we have demonstrated that RELAP5 can predict flow instability parameters (flow rate, oscillation period, temperature, and pressure) in single channel tests in CIRCUS-IV facility. The main goals of this work are to (i) validate RELAP5 and TRACE capabilities in prediction of two-phase flow instability and flow regimes and (ii) assess the effect of improvement in flow regime identification on code predictions. Most of the results of RELAP5 and TRACE calculation are in reasonable agreement with experimental data from CIRCUS-IV. However, both codes misidentified instantaneous flow regimes which were observed in the test with high speed camera. One of the reasons for the incorrect identification of the flow regimes is the small tube flow regime transition model in RELAP5 and the combined bubbly-slug flow regime in TRACE. We found that calculation results are sensitive to flow regime boundaries of RELAP5 which were modified in order to match the experimental data on flow regimes. Although the flow regime became closer to the experimental one, other predicted thermal hydraulic parameters showed larger discrepancy with the experimental data than with the base case calculations where flow regimes were misidentified.