Prediction of air leakage and aerosol transport through concrete cracks with a fractal based crack morphology model

Cracks may appear in pressurized concrete containment of a nuclear power plant during a severe accident and provide leak paths for release of radioactive aerosols dispersed in the contained air. In this paper, a fractal based crack morphology model is presented for prediction of air leakage and aerosol transport through cracks in concrete. Airflow field generated in air leakage studies is used for aerosol transport studies with the Lagrangian discrete phase model using CFD code FLUENT. Computational studies conducted with the fractal based model are compared with the experimental data as well as the predictions from empirical relations available in open literature. The comparative studies demonstrate effectiveness of the proposed fractal based model and its versatility for practical applications.