On the hydraulic behaviour of ITER Shield Blocks #14 and #08. Computational analysis and comparison with experimental tests

As a consequence of its position and functions, the ITER blanket system will be subjected to significant heat loads under nominal reference conditions. Therefore, the design of its cooling system is particularly demanding. Coolant water is distributed individually to the 440 blanket modules (BMs) through manifold piping, which makes it a highly parallelized system. The mass flow rate distribution is finely tuned to meet all operation constraints: adequate margin to burn out in the plasma facing components, even distribution of water flow among the so-called plasma-facing fingers of the Blanket First Wall panels, high enough water flow rate to avoid excessive water temperature in the outlet pipes, maximum allowable water velocity lower than 7 m/s in manifold pipes. Furthermore the overall pressure drop and flow rate in each BM shall be within the fixed specified design limit to avoid an unduly unbalance of cooling among the 440 modules. Analyses have to be carried out following a computational fluid-dynamic (CFD) approach based on the finite volume method and adopting a CFD commercial code to assess the thermal-hydraulic behaviour of each single circuit of the ITER blanket cooling system. This paper describes the code benchmarking needed to determine the best method to get reliable and timely results. Since experimental tests are available in ITER Organization on full scale prototypes of Shield Blocks #08 and #14, CFD analyses have been performed to investigate their fluid-dynamic behaviour under steady state conditions and compare the numerical and experimental results. Results obtained are presented and critically discussed. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.