Numerical Study of Fluid Structure Interaction in Nuclear Reactor Applications

Flow-induced vibration (FIV) plays an important role in the nuclear industry. In nuclear power plants (NPP), the FIV may cause fatigue problems, stress corrosion cracking, possible failure modes and fretting wear. This in return can lead to nuclear safety issues and substantial stand-still costs due to unplanned outages. It is therefore...

Modelling Turbulent Non-Premixed Combustion in Industrial Furnaces

Measuring the temperature distribution inside the rotary kilns, using thermocouples for instance has proven to be difficult due to the harsh operating conditions of the kiln. Numerical modelling of turbulent combustion and the associated physical phenomenon thus proves to be an indispensable tool towards predicting the kiln operating conditions....

Temperature distribution of shallow water FLNG cooling water outfalls

FLNG cooling water outfalls can be characterized as high momentum buoyant jets, relatively close to the surface. The buoyant jet trajectories, spreading rates and surface distribution very much depend on the jet outflow characteristics. A study with the CFD software OpenFOAM has been carried out into the mixing and transport processes of buoyant...

Incorporation of the effects of accelerating flow in the design of granular bed protections

For the design of granular bed protections often a stability parameter is used. The stability parameter represents the forces that are acting on the stones and is used to predict the response of the bed to these forces. Existing parameters are often derived for a limited range of application. When the parameter is used outside this range, the...

Numerical modelling of bow thrusters at open quay structures

Introduction Bow thrusters are of great help for the navigation at quay walls, but the high and turbulent velocities can result in a bed load exceeding the strength of the bed or bed protection. To be able to design a stable bed the velocities at the bed need to be accurately determined. In design practise the velocities generated by a propeller...

Modelling of Scour Depth at Quay Walls due to Thrusters

Introduction Inland and seagoing vessels are equipped with (bow) thrusters. The use of these thrusters can cause scour of the bed alongside a quay wall. In order to assess the consequences of local scour due to bow thrusters on the design of the structure it is desirable to know the dimensions of the scour holes as a function of in time....

Numerical Investigations of Coherent Structures in Axial Flow in Single Rod-Channel Geometry

In order to ramp up the conversion ratios and burn-up of nuclear reactors, it is inevitable to go to tightly packed fuel rods in the reactor. These nuclear reactors with tightly packed rod-bundles are characterized by interesting flow patterns, different from the ones encountered in regular channel and pipe flows. The correct prediction and...

A hardware Accelerator for the OpenFOAM Sparse Matrix-Vector Product

One of the key kernels in scientific applications is the Sparse Matrix Vector Multiplication (SMVM). Profiling OpenFOAM, a sophisticated scientific Computational Fluid Dynamics tool, proved the SMVM to be its most computational intensive kernel. A traditional way to solve such computationally intensive problems in scientific applications is to...