Optimization of the Atucha-II fuel assembly spacer grids

The presentation is entitled optimisation of the Atucha-II fuel assembly spacer grids. This work deals with a demonstrative application of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for design optimisation .A commercial CFD code was applied to simulate the flow within Atucha-II reactor coolant channels and to assess the resulting pressure losses. Two types of grid were simulated, i.e. the so-called “elastic spacer” and “rigid spacer”, which are made from different materials and have totally different geometries. Both designs are planned to be adopted in Atucha-II reactor. The turbulence model and the grid need to be addressed to have a confidence in the results. No experimental validation is discussed