Fluid Structure Interaction Modeling Of High Aspect Ratio Nuclear Fuel Plates Using Comsol

The High Flux Isotope Reactor at the Oak Ridge National Lab is in the research stage of converting its fuel from high-enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium. Due to different physical properties of the new fuel and changes to the internal fuel plate design, the current safety basis must be re-evaluated through rigorous computational analyses. One of the areas being explored is the fluid-structure interaction phenomenon due to the interaction of thin fuel plates (50 mils thickness) and the cooling fluid (water). Detailed computational fluid dynamics and fluid-structure interaction simulations have only recently become feasible due to improved numerical algorithms and advancements in computing technology. For many reasons including the already built-in fluid-structure interaction module, COMSOL has been chosen for this complex problem. COMSOL's ability to solve multiphysics problems using a fully-coupled and implicit solution algorithm is crucial in obtaining a stable and accurate solution. Our initial findings show that COMSOL can accurately model such problems due to its ability to closely couple the fluid dynamics and the structural dynamics problems.