Numerical analysis of a nuclear fuel element for nuclear thermal propulsionA computational fluid dynamics model with porosity and permeability formulations in the transport equations has been developed to study the concept of nuclear thermal propulsion through the analysis of a pulsed irradiation of a particle bed element (PIPE). The numerical model is a time-accurate pressure-based formulation. An adaptive upwind scheme is employed for spatial discretization. The upwind scheme is based on second- and fourth-order central differencing with adaptive artificial dissipation. Multiblocked porosity regions have been formulated to model the cold frit, particle bed, and hot frit. Multiblocked permeability regions have been formulated to describe the flow shaping effect from the thickness-varying cold frit. Computational results for several zero-power density PIPEs and an elevated-particle-temperature PIPE are presented. The implications of the computational results are discussed.
Document ID
19910067826
Acquisition Source
Legacy CDMS
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Wang, Ten-See (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL, United States)
Schutzenhofer, Luke (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL, United States)