Coupling of system thermal-hydraulics and Monte-Carlo method for a consistent thermal-hydraulics-reactor physics feedback

Monte Carlo;Thermal-hydraulics;Neutronics;Code coupling

Wu, Xu ; Kozlowski ; Tomasz

关键词: Monte Carlo;    Thermal-hydraulics;    Neutronics;    Code coupling;   

Others  :  https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/45550/Xu_Wu.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

美国|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

The present thesis describes the coupling of a three-dimensional continuous-energy Monte Carlo reactor physics code, Serpent, with thermal-hydraulics safety analysis code RELAP5-3D. Thermal-hydraulics and reactor physics coupling iscommonly used in deterministic methods, for example RELAP5/PARCS and TRACE/PARCS. It has been well-validated for a number of steady and transient problems. The coupling of Monte-Carlo and reactor thermal-hydraulics will significantly improve the MC predictive capability and its applicability to a wide range of reactor problems of practical interest, as right now it is limited to fixed-feedback conditions.In this thesis, the coupled Serpent/RELAP5-3D code capability is demonstrated by the improved axial power distribution of single assemblies, achieved by a consistent thermal-hydraulics feedback. The code coupling is demonstrated for the UO2 and MOX single assemblies based on the OECD-NEA/NRC PWR MOX-UO2 Core Transient Benchmark [1]. Comparisons of calculation results using the coupled code with those from the individual codes in stand-alone mode, also with deterministic methods, specifically heterogeneous multi-group transport code DeCART, show that the coupling producesmore precise results.