Use of finite-volume scheme for simulation of hydrogen explosions.

A. Beccantini, P. Pailhories, Technical meeting on use of comptational fluid dynamics (CFD), 11-15 november 2002, Pise (Italy).

The CREBCOM combustion model, developed at the Kurchatov Institute (Russia), is devoted to the simulation of combustion in large geometries with respect to the characteristic dimensions of the physical phenomena involved. Thermal conduction and species diffusion, which are responsible for the propagation of a deflagration, are not directly modeled. Instead, their action is taken into account by introducing a source term based on correlations into the Euler equations. This model has been implemented in the CEA-IRSN code TONUS. The purpose is the evaluation, in the case of a severe accident with hydrogen formation, of the pressure loads due the combustion of hydrogen-air-steam mixtures in the containment of a nuclear power plant. The purpose of this paper is to describe the CREBCOM model implemented in TONUS. Several small-scale and large-scale validation tests are presented to demonstrate that the code gives a satisfactory estimation of the pressure load on the walls. Finally, a simplified reactor application performed in the frame of the HYCOM project is shown.