Flow Analysis for Optimum Design of Mixing Vane in a PWR Fuel Assembly

Abstract

A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was performed to propose the optimum design of flow mixing vane on the space grid in a PWR fuel assembly. The flow mixing vanes considered in this study for optimum design are swirl-vane and twisted-vane. A single subchannel of one grid span was modeled using flow symmetry to minimize the computational effort. The CFD predictions are in good agreement with the experimental results for the split- vane, which shows the applicability of the CFD method. The mixing effect by swirling flow and crossflow, and the pressure drop were estimated and compared for the various vane angles. The optimum vane angle is proposed to be 40。 and 35。 from the direction of axial flow for the swirl-vane and the twisted-vane, respectively.