AUTHOR=Huang Xi , Pang Bo , Chai Xiang , Yin Yuan TITLE=Proposal of a turbulent Prandtl number model for Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes approach on the modeling of turbulent heat transfer of low-Prandtl number liquid metal JOURNAL=Frontiers in Energy Research VOLUME=10 YEAR=2022 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/energy-research/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2022.928693 DOI=10.3389/fenrg.2022.928693 ISSN=2296-598X ABSTRACT=
Because of their high molecular heat conductivity, low-Prandtl number liquid metal is a promising candidate coolant for various designs of advanced nuclear systems such as liquid metal–cooled fast reactors and accelerator-driven sub-critical system (ADS). With the fast-growing computational capacity, more and more attention has been paid to applying computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods in thermal design and safety assessment of such systems for a detailed analysis of three-dimensional thermal–hydraulic behaviors. However, numerical modeling of turbulent heat transfer for low-Prandtl number liquid metal remains a challenging task. Numerical approaches such as wall-resolved large eddy simulation (LES) or direct numerical simulation (DNS), which can provide detailed insight into the physics of the liquid metal flow and the associated heat transfer, were widely applied to investigate the turbulent heat transfer phenomenon. However, these approaches suffer from the enormous computational consumption and are hence limited only to simple geometrical configurations with low to moderate Reynolds numbers. The Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) approach associated with a turbulent Prandtl number