Conservative conservation equations: Numerical approach and code-to-code benchmarks

One of the principle features of RELAP5-based system thermal hydraulic codes is the use of a two-fluid, non-equilibrium, non-homogeneous, hydrodynamic model for the transient simulation of the two-phase system behavior. This model includes six governing equations to describe the mass, energy, and momentum of the two fluids. The current version of RELAP-5 is not a fully conservative code because it uses both non-conservative and conservative numerical approximation forms of conservation equations. The current version of RELAP5 versions have mass and energy errors during time advancements, either resulting in (a) automatic reduction of time steps used in the advancement of the equations and increased run times or (b) the growth of unacceptably large errors in the transient results. Therefore, fully conservative conservation equations and closure equations have recently been developed to address this problem. This article demonstrates the numerical approach to implement the developed fully conservative conservation equations into RELAP5 and the results of RELAP5 including developed conservative form of conservation equations. RELAP5 versions including conservative and non-conservative conservation equations are compared for various tests from a single pipe to a whole Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) model.