Benchmarking of thermal hydraulic loop models for Lead-Alloy Cooled Advanced Nuclear Energy System (LACANES), phase-I: Isothermal steady state forced convection

As highly promising coolant for new generation nuclear reactors, liquid Lead–Bismuth Eutectic has been extensively worldwide investigated. With high expectation about this advanced coolant, a multi-national systematic study on LBE was proposed in 2007, which covers benchmarking of thermal hydraulic prediction models for Lead-Alloy Cooled Advanced Nuclear Energy System (LACANES). This international collaboration has been organized by OECD/NEA, and nine organizations – ENEA, ERSE, GIDROPRESS, IAEA, IPPE, KIT/IKET, KIT/INR, NUTRECK, and RRC KI – contribute their efforts to LACANES benchmarking. To produce experimental data for LACANES benchmarking, thermal–hydraulic tests were conducted by using a 12-m tall LBE integral test facility, named as Heavy Eutectic liquid metal loop for integral test of Operability and Safety of PEACER (HELIOS) which has been constructed in 2005 at the Seoul National University in the Republic of Korea. LACANES benchmark campaigns consist of a forced convection (phase-I) and a natural circulation (phase-II). In the forced convection case, the predictions of pressure losses based on handbook correlations and that obtained by Computational Fluid Dynamics code simulation were compared with the measured data for various components of the HELIOS test facility. Based on comparative analyses of the predictions and the measured data, recommendations for the prediction methods of a pressure loss in LACANES were obtained. In this paper, results for the forced convection case (phase-I) of LACANES benchmarking are described.