An implicit numerical scheme for the simulation of three-dimensional two-phase flows in light water nuclear reactors

An implicit numerical scheme is presented for solving the two-fluid model widely used in the analysis of a gas-liquid two-phase flow in light water nuclear reactors (LWRs). The pressure equation is established by combining the momentum and mass conservation equations. The implicit calculation of each governing equation is separated into phase- and space-link steps. In the phase-link step, the interfacial momentum and heat transfers are implicitly calculated. Then the solution accounting for the convection and diffusion terms is calculated simultaneously in space. The phase- and space-link steps are repeated for convergence. The numerical scheme is implemented in CUPID, which is a multidimensional two-phase flow analysis code for LWRs, and verified against a set of conceptual two-phase flow problems which include typical thermal hydraulic phenomena in LWRs. Calculations are performed using four numerical schemes, semi-implicit ICE and SMAC schemes, an implicit scheme, and an implicit scheme with increased time step size, and the results are discussed.