Numerical Analysis of the Turbulent Flow and Heat Transfer in a Heated Rod Bundle

A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis has been performed to investigate the turbulent flow and heat transfer in a triangular rod bundle with pitch-to-diameter ratios (P/D) of 1.06 and 1.12. Anisotropic turbulence models predicted the turbulence-driven secondary flow in a triangular subchannel and the distributions of the time mean velocity and temperature, showing a significantly improved agreement with the measurements from the linear standard model. The anisotropic turbulence models predicted the turbulence structure for a rod bundle with a large P/D fairly well, but could not predict the very high turbulent intensity of the azimuthal velocity observed in the narrow flow region (gap) for a rod bundle with a small P/D.