Multistart Simulated Annealing applied to a Reduced Scale Thermo-Hydraulic Loop of a Pressurized Water Reactor core

In this paper we investigate the reduced scale design of a third generation Pressurized Water Reactor core, with single phase flow under natural circulation, based on the Loss-of-Fluid Test facility. Recent works approach this issue applying metaheuristics such as Genetic Algorithms and Particle Swarm Optimization. Both approaches have, as a drawback, the high computational time to obtain an acceptable solution. Here, we propose an alternative method when computational time is critical. We approach the problem applying a Multistart Simulated Annealing method in order to obtain an acceptable solution in a lower computational time. Our results indicate a 98.7% computational time improvement over the state-of-the-art Particle Swarm Optimization method. Moreover, the Multistart Simulated Annealing results are 1.36% better than state-of-the-art Particle Swarm Optimization method. Thus, Multistart SA shows promising results and is a suitable method when time is critical.