Numerical Evaluation of the Sphere Packed Pipe as a Heat Transfer Promoter for the Molten Salt Blanket System in a Fusion Reactor

چکیده مقاله

This computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis aims to evaluate the flow structures and heat transfer characteristics in sphere packed pipe (SPP) for potential application in Fusion reactors. The SPP consists of metal spheres which are packed in a pipe and disturb the flow inside of the pipe to boost the heat transfer. One of the potential applications of SPP is using it at the first wall of Force Free Helical Reactors (FFHR). Compared to previous numerical studies the numerical model in this study has improved on the numerical model, gaps between pebbles and channel wall, and turbulent model. The standard k-epsilon model, Omega Reynolds stress model, the Shear Stress Transport (SST) model and k epsilon EARSM/BSL have been applied as turbulence model to examine the effect of turbulence model on validation of numerical results. Results showed that among the considered turbulent models, the overall heat transfer characteristic in terms of the relation between Nu and Re was well predicted by k epsilon EARSM/BSL turbulent model in this simulation to those calculated from empirical correlation equations and previous simulations. The present numerical model can be used in the design of the blanket of Fusion reactor.