Analysis of turbulence models for thermohydraulic calculations of helium cooled fusion reactor components

The aim of the present work is to choose an optimal use of CFD codes for thermohydraulic calculation of the helium cooled fusion reactor components, such as divertor module, test blanket module and International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility (IFMIF) test modules. In spite of common features (intense heat flux, nuclear heating of the structure, helium-cooling), all these components have different boundary conditions, such as helium temperature, pressure and heating rate and different geometries. It is the reason for the appearance of some effects in the flow influencing significantly the heat transfer. A number of turbulence models offered by the commercial STAR-CD code were tested on the experiments carried out in the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (FZK) and on the experimental data from the scientific publications. Results of different turbulence models are compared and analysed. For geometrically simple channel flows with significant gas property variation low-Re number k–ɛ models with damping functions give more accurate results and are more appropriate for the conditions of the IFMIF HFTM. The heat transfer in regions with flow impingement is well predicted by turbulence models, which include different limiters in the turbulence production. Most reliable turbulence models were chosen for the thermohydraulic analysis.