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The critical power corresponding to the Critical Heat Flux (CHF) or dryout condition is an important design parameter for the evaluation of safety margins in a nuclear fuel bundle. The empirical approaches for the prediction of CHF in a rod bundle are highly geometric specific and proprietary in nature. The critical power experiments are very expensive and technically challenging owing to the stringent simulation requirements for the rod bundle tests involving radial and axial power profiles. In view of this, the mechanistic approach has gained momentum in the thermal hydraulic community. The Liquid Film Dryout (LFD) in an annular flow is the mechanism of CHF under BWR conditions and the dryout modeling has been found to predict the CHF quite accurately for a tubular geometry. The successful extension of the mechanistic model of dryout to the rod bundle application is vital for the evaluation of critical power in the rod bundle. The present work proposes the uniform film flow approach around the rod by analyzing individual film of the subchannel bounded by rods with different heat fluxes resulting in different film flow rates around a rod and subsequently distributing the varying film flow rates of a rod to arrive at the uniform film flow rate as it has been found that the liquid film has a strong tendency to be uniform around the rod. The FIDOM-Rod code developed for the dryout prediction in BWR assemblies provides detailed solution of the multiple liquid films in a subchannel. The approach of uniform film flow rate around the rod simplifies the liquid film cross flow modeling and was found to provide dryout prediction with a good accuracy when compared with the experimental data of 16, 19 and 37 rod bundles under BWR conditions. The critical power has been predicted for a newly designed 54 rod bundle of the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR). The selected constitutive models for the droplet entrainment and deposition rates validated for the dryout in tube were also found to perform well for the rod bundle under BWR conditions.

A Mechanistic Approach for the Prediction of Critical Power in BWR Fuel Bundles