Hydraulic Modelling of Cable-in-Conduit Conductors (CICC): CFD Approach

A practical design of cable-in-conduit conductor (GIGG) cables, for different applications, involves calculation of pressure drop, friction factor and heat transfer. The flow analysis is expected to address the hydraulic issues relevant to the design of GICCs for safe and optimum operation. Flow analysis also yields the pumping power required to circulate the coolant (Supercritical Helium (SHe)). In the present work, a dual channel GIGG with central spiral is considered for pressure drop analysis. The effect of mass flow rate on the pressure drop has been investigated. The computational domain is built and meshed in GAMBIT 2.0. The mesh was exported to FLUENT 6.3, a commercial GFO code, for further analysis. It is observed that as the mass flow rate through the conduit increases, the pressure drop increases appreciably. Friction factor in the GIGG is calculated from the pressure drop obtained from FLUENT. This paper also presents the GFO methodology to find the pressure drop.