New Functionality of TRACE: The 3DPost-Processing for the VESSEL Component in SALOME Platform (NUREG/IA-0539)

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Publication Information

Manuscript Completed: July 2022
Date Published: May 2024

Prepared by:
Kanglong Zhang; Victor Hugo Sanchez-Espinoza
Institute for Neutron Physics and Reactor Technology (INR), Karlsruhe Institute of
Technology (KIT) Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1
Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Baden-Württemberg, 76344, Germany

K. Tien, NRC Project Manager

Division of Systems Analysis
Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, DC 20555-0001

Prepared as part of:
The Agreement on Research Participation and Technical Exchange
Under the Thermal-Hydraulic Code Applications and Maintenance Program (CAMP)

Published by:
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington, DC 20555-0001

Availability Notice

Abstract

The researchers from the group of Reactor Physics and Dynamics (RPD) which is under the Institute of Institute for Neutron Physics and Reactor Technology (INR) - Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) - Germany, have developed a new post-processing functionality for the U.S. NRC system thermal-hydraulic code - TRACE. Now, the 3D VESSEL component of TRACE and the calculated physical fields stored in the component can be visualized in a pre- and post-processing open-source platform - SALOME with the help of a powerful data-processing library - MEDCoupling.

The researchers develop new Fortran and C++ routines to automatically identify and select the geometrical data set from TRACE input files. This data set is processed by the MEDCoupling library to generate a polyhedron mesh and a surface mesh. They are both 3D objects. The former store cell-centered fields e.g., the coolant temperature and the pressure while the latter store face-located variables e.g., the coolant velocity and the pressure drop.

Twenty-one kinds of fields can be post-processed associated with the two VESSEL meshes at present including the coolant density, the void fraction, etc. Users can conveniently access the VESSEL meshes and the fields in SALOME with plenty of operations e.g., cutting, data filtering. Scaling up the processed fields is now in planning.

This functionality was tested by processing the results gained from a VVER-1000 coolant mixing simulation.