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Study of a low Mach nuclear core model for two-phase flows with phase transition I: Stiffened gas law. (English) Zbl 1304.35529

Summary: In this paper, we are interested in modelling the flow of the coolant (water) in a nuclear reactor core. To this end, we use a monodimensional low Mach number model supplemented with the stiffened gas law. We take into account potential phase transitions by a single equation of state which describes both pure and mixture phases. In some particular cases, we give analytical steady and/or unsteady solutions which provide qualitative information about the flow. In the second part of the paper, we introduce two variants of a numerical scheme based on the method of characteristics to simulate this model. We study and verify numerically the properties of these schemes. We finally present numerical simulations of a loss of flow accident (LOFA) induced by a coolant pump trip event.

MSC:

35Q35 PDEs in connection with fluid mechanics
35Q79 PDEs in connection with classical thermodynamics and heat transfer
65M25 Numerical aspects of the method of characteristics for initial value and initial-boundary value problems involving PDEs
76T10 Liquid-gas two-phase flows, bubbly flows
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