Advanced benchmark of the flow through a mixing vane grid – Large eddy simulation validation

Abstract Identifying what causes fuel assembly vibrations downstream of Mixing Vane Grids (MVG) in Pressurized Water reactor (PWR) is of paramount importance for nuclear community to understand grid-to-rod fretting wear. Experiments, called CALIFS, were carried out by the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) on a 5 × 5 MVG at a hydraulic Reynolds number of 66,000, in order to measure the flow velocity and the pressure along the central rod. In parallel, a benchmark for Large Eddy Simulation (LES) was setup to compare the predictions of three different CFD codes: Star-CCM+, Code_Saturne and TrioCFD to experimental measurements. The computational domain is representative of a span of CALIFS mockup, composed of a 5 × 5 rod bundle with a MVG. The three computations overall give very satisfactory results, independently from the mesh created and the modelling options selected. It seems to suggest that whatever the software used, this kind of calculations has reached a significant level of robustness and accuracy. Nonetheless, some discrepancies remain concerning the predictions of pressure standard deviation decay far downstream of the mixing vane grid.