Verification, validation and application of NEPTUNE_CFD to two-phase Pressurized Thermal Shocks

Nuclear Power Plants are subjected to a variety of ageing mechanisms and, at the same time, exposed to potential Pressurized Thermal Shock (PTS) – characterized by a rapid cooling of the Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) wall. In this context, NEPTUNE_CFD is developed and used to model two-phase PTS in an industrial configuration, providing temperature and pressure fields required to assess the integrity of the RPV. Furthermore, when using CFD for nuclear safety demonstration purposes, EDF applies a methodology based on physical analysis, verification, validation and application to industrial scale (V&V), to demonstrate the quality of, and the confidence in results obtained. By following this methodology, each step must be proved to be consistent with the others, and with the final goal of the calculations. To this effect, a chart demonstrating how far the validation step of NEPTUNE_CFD is covering the PTS application will be drawn. A selection of the code verification and validation cases against different experiments will be described. For results consistency, a single and mature set of models – resulting from the knowledge acquired during the code development over the last decade – has been used. From these development and validation feedbacks, a methodology has been set up to perform industrial computations. Finally, the guidelines of this methodology based on NEPTUNE_CFD and SYRTHES coupling – to take into account the conjugate heat transfer between liquid and solid – will be presented. A short overview of the engineering approach will be given – starting from the meshing process, up to the results post-treatment and analysis.