An assessment of k-ε turbulence models for gas distribution analysis

This paper presents the gas distribution analysis by injecting air fountain into the containment and simulations with the HYDRAGON code. Turbulence models of standard k-epsilon (SKE), re-normalization group k-epsilon (RNG) and a realizable k-epsilon (RLZ) are used to assess the effects on the gas distribution analysis during a severe accident in a nuclear power plant. By comparing with experimental data, the simulation results of the RNG and SKE turbulence models agree well with the experimental data on the prediction of dimensionless density distributions. The results illustrate that the turbulence model choice had a small effect on the simulation results, particularly the region near to the air fountain source.