Acceleration of coupled granular flow and fluid flow simulations in pebble bed energy systems

Fast and accurate approaches to simulating the coupled particle flow and fluid flow are of importance to the analysis of large particle-fluid systems. This is especially needed when one tries to simulate pebble flow and coolant flow in Pebble Bed Reactor (PBR) energy systems on a routine basis. As one of the Generation IV designs, the PBR design is a promising nuclear energy system with high fuel performance and inherent safety. A typical PBR core can be modeled as a particle-fluid system with strong interactions among pebbles, coolants and reactor walls. In previous works, the coupled Discrete Element Method (DEM)-Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approach has been investigated and applied to modeling PBR systems. However, the DEM-CFD approach is computationally expensive due to large amounts of pebbles in PBR systems. This greatly restricts the PBR analysis for the real time prediction and inclusion of more physics. In this work, based on the symmetry of the PBR geometry and the slow motion characteristics of the pebble flow, two acceleration strategies are proposed. First, a simplified 3D-DEM/2D-CFD approach is proposed to speed up the DEM-CFD simulation without loss of accuracy. Pebble flow is simulated by a full 3D DEM, while the coolant flow field is calculated with a 2D CFD simulation by averaging variables along the annular direction in the cylindrical and annular geometries. Second, based on the slow motion of pebble flow, the impact of the coupling frequency on the computation accuracy and efficiency is investigated. It shows that the coupling frequency can be decreased to an optimal frequency without affecting the method fidelity. By analyzing one of the PBR systems, the HTR-10 design, we show that the combined acceleration strategies can reduce the simulation time by 80% while retaining the same accuracy as the tightly coupled 3D DEM and 3D CFD simulations. Therefore, it is expected that the proposed acceleration methods can advance the coupled DEM-CFD approach to analyze the PBR, accounting for more physics such as thermal and neutronic effects, on a routine basis.

► Fast simulation of coupled pebble flow and coolant flow in PBR systems is studied.
► Dimension reduction based on axisymmetric geometry shows significant speedup.
► Relaxation of coupling frequency is investigated and an optimal range is determined.
► A total of 80% efficiency increase is achieved by the two fast strategies.
► Fast strategies can be applied to simulating other general fluidized bed systems.