Preliminary development and verification of an OpenFOAM-based multi-physics coupling safety analysis code for Lead-based reactor

The thermal-hydraulics and safety analysis of Lead-based Fast Reactor (LFR) have drawn great attentions in recent years. By employing an implicit coupling strategy, a new multi-physics coupling code for safety analysis of LFR, was developed based on OpenFOAM. Point kinetics and fuel pin heat conduction modules were coupled to CFD module with turbulence consideration. Verifications were conducted by steady state and Beam Trip (BT), Beam Over Power (BOP) and Transient Over Power (TOP) accidents transient simulations in a single fuel pin channel of LFR. Results simulated by new coupling code proposed in this paper agree well with the ones provided by a safety analysis platform HC-PK-CFD based on ANSYS FLUENT. It demonstrated the feasibility and accuracy of implicit coupling strategy developed in this paper, as well as the capability of new program to perform multi-physics coupling simulations involved in thermal-hydraulics and safety analysis of LFR.