NUPEC BFBT SUBCHANNEL VOID DISTRIBUTION ANALYSIS USING THE MATRA AND MARS CODES

The subchannel grade void distributions in the NUPEC (Nuclear Power Engineering Corporation) BFBT (BWR Full-Size Fine-Mesh Bundle Tests) facility were evaluated with the subchannel analysis code MATRA and the system code MARS. Fifteen test series from five different test bundles were selected for an analysis of the steady-state subchannel void distributions. Two transient cases, a turbine trip without a bypass as a typical power transient and a re-circulation pump trip as a flow transient, were also chosen for this analysis. It was found that the steady-state void distributions calculated by both the MATRA and MARS codes coincided well with the measured data in the range of thermodynamic qualities from 5 % to 25 %. The results of the transient calculations were also similar and were highly feasible. However, the computational aspects of the two codes were clearly different. KCI Citation Count: 6