Coupling of RELAP5-3D and GAMMA codes for Nuclear Hydrogen System Analysis

Abstract

RELAP5-3D is one of the most important system analysis codes in nuclear field, which has been developed for best-estimate transient simulation of light water reactor coolant systems during postulated accidents. The GAMMA code is a multi-dimensional multi-component mixture analysis code with the complete set of chemical reaction models which is developed for safety analysis of HTGR (High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor) air-ingress. The two codes, RELAP5-3D and GAMMA, are coupled to be used for nuclear-hydrogen system analysis, which requires the capability of the analysis of multi-component gas mixture and two-phase flow. In order to couple the two codes, 4 steps are needed. Before coupling, the GAMMA code was transformed into DLL (dynamic link liberally) from executive type and RELAP5-3D was recompiled into Compaq Visual Fortran environments for our debugging purpose. As the second step, two programs – RELAP5-3D and GAMMA codes - must be synchronized in terms of time and time step. Based on that time coupling, the coupled code can calculate simultaneously. Time-step coupling had been accomplished successfully and it is tested by using a simple test input. As a next step, source-term coupling was done and it was also tested in two different test inputs. The fist case is a simple test condition, which has no chemical reaction. And the other test set is the chemical reaction model, including four non-condensable gas species, which are He, O2, CO, CO2. Finally, in order to analyze combined cycle system, heat-flux coupling has been made and a simple heat exchanger model was demonstrated.