École Nationale Supérieure de
Techniques Avancées

Abstract

In this work, the velocity and the temperature of the Sodium coolant inside the ESFR sub-channel were analyzed using CFD codes. Different OpenFOAM solvers with two turbulent models were used to obtain the velocity profile across the sub-channel. Then, the solvers were modified to include the heat transfer equation to evaluate the temperature evolution. The velocity profile obtained indicates the formation of a fully developed turbulent flow across the sub-channel and the Sodium bulk temperatures between the sub-channel’s inlet and outlet are in agreement with those reported in literature. Between the turbulent models used, the RAS k-𝜔 SST model was found to be more accurate in accounting for the turbulence in the near wall regions compared to the k- 𝜖 model which shows an asymmetrical behavior of the turbulent parameters across the sub-channel despite its geometrical symmetry. ANSYS Fluent was also used to simulate the flow of the Sodium coolant inside the sub-channel. In general, the results obtained were in good agreement with the ones obtained from the different OpenFOAM solvers.