Thermo-Fluid Dynamics and System Analysis

About

In addition to the technical-economic challenges, technical safety issues are of particular importance with respect to the acceptance of new technologies. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used today as a key simulation tool to investigate safety issues related to accidental/accidental hydrogen leakage and to develop or evaluate appropriate safety measures. Here, a distinction must be made between specialized (e.g. FLACS) and general-purpose CFD programs (e.g. ANSYS CFX or OpenFOAM). The former are already used in licensing procedures, but their functionality and validation are strongly oriented towards the licensees' market-ready applications. Multi-purpose CFD programs allow easy know-how/model transfer from other applications, have state-of-the-art numerical methods and solvers and, due to the large user base, also extensive interfaces, e.g. to CAD software, and are very well suited for the simulation and evaluation of novel technologies.

The working group 'Thermo-Fluid Dynamics and System Analysis' has been developing models for the simulation of hydrogen distribution in the course of severe accidents in nuclear power plants (e.g. Fukushima) for 15 years and successfully transfers this experience to other hydrogen applications. For the last five years, this expertise has been consolidated and brought into application with the development of the customized simulation package 'containmentFOAM' based on the source-open CFD software OpenFOAM. Major challenge for the model application to new hydrogen technologies is the description of the dynamic operating characteristics of all involved systems and components, for which a dedicated experimental characterization is required.

Research Topics

  • Open-source CFD model development and validation
  • Systematic integration of physical phenomena
  • Buoyancy driven multi-component flows
  • Condensation heat and mass transfer
  • Thermal radiation
  • Modeling of technical systems behavior

Contact

Dr.-Ing. Stephan Kelm

IET-4

Building 14.14 / Room 3014

+49 2461/61-3871

E-Mail

Members

Last Modified: 04.12.2024