CTF: A modernized, production-level, thermal hydraulic solver for the solution of industry-relevant challenge problems in pressurized water reactors

Robert Salko, Aaron Wysocki, Taylor Blyth, Aysenur Toptan, Jianwei Hu, Vineet Kumar, Chris Dances, William Dawn, Yixing Sung, Vefa Kucukboyaci, William Gurecky, Travis Lange, Xingang Zhao, Jordan Rader, Caleb Jernigan, Benjamin Collins, Maria Avramova, Jeffrey Magedanz, Scott Palmtag, Kevin ClarnoDave Kropaczek, Belgacem Hizoum, Andrew Godfrey, Dave Pointer, John Turner, Ramanan Sankaran, Rod Schmidt, Russell Hooper, Roscoe Bartlett, Mark Baird, Martin Pilch

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

22 Scopus citations

Abstract

CTF is a thermal hydraulic (T/H) subchannel tool that has been extensively developed over the past ten years as part of the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) program. The code was selected early in the CASL program for support of high-impact challenge problems that were found to be relevant to the nuclear industry and its currently operating fleet of pressurized water reactors (PWRs), including issues such as departure from nucleate boiling (DNB), crud-induced power shifts (CIPSs), and reactivity-insertion accidents (RIAs). By incorporating CTF into the multiphysics Virtual Environment for Reactor Application (VERA) core simulator software developed by CASL, CTF has become the primary means of providing fluid and fuel thermal feedback, as well as T/H figure-of-merits (FOMs) in large-scale reactor simulations. With the goal of solving industry challenge problems, CASL placed great emphasis on developing high-quality, high-performance, validated software tools that offer higher fidelity than what is currently possible with current industry methods. In support of this effort, CTF was developed from a research tool into an nuclear quality assurance (NQA-1)–compliant, production-level software tool that is capable of addressing the stated challenge problems and goals of CASL. This paper presents a review of the major technological achievements that were realized in developing CTF over the past decade of the CASL program and presents an overview of the code solution approach and closure models.

Original languageEnglish
Article number111927
JournalNuclear Engineering and Design
Volume397
Early online dateAug 31 2022
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 2022

Keywords

  • CTF
  • LWR
  • Subchannel
  • VERA

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