DEM simulations in nuclear engineering: a review of recent progress

ABSTRACT

In nuclear engineering, solid particles are associated with numerous processes, such as solid – fluid flows in pebble bed reactors, coating during fuel fabrication, and debris bed formation during severe accidents. Thus, understanding granular systems is key to performing the design, optimization, and safety analyses of these processes. The discrete element method (DEM) represents a standard numerical method for simulating granular systems. Despite the several reviews on DEM, none summarizes its recent development and applications in nuclear engineering. Thus, a systematic review of its applications and achievements in various nuclear engineering fields is reported herein. First, the methodologies of DEM for single-phase granular flows, and multiphase flows including resolved and unresolved (locally averaged) DEM – computational fluid dynamics method are summarized here. Thereafter, the corresponding applications of these methods in granular flow, multiphase flow, and heat transfer in nuclear engineering are reviewed. This review may further accelerate the methodology development for DEM as well as may extend its applications in nuclear engineering fields.

KEYWORDS:

• Discrete element method
• multiphase flow
• heat transfer
• granular flow
• nuclear engineering

Acknowledgments

This study was financially supported by JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Number 21K19760, 21H04870, and 17KK0110). Rui Li gratefully acknowledges the scholarship from the China Scholarship Council Overseas Postgraduate Program (Grant Number. 202006380024).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI [21K19760, 21H04870, and 17KK0110]; the China Scholarship Council [202006380024].