Annals of Nuclear Energy 108 (2017) 253–267

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Annals of Nuclear Energy

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/anucene

Unsteady-state thermal stress and thermal deformation analysis for a

pressurizer surge line subjected to thermal stratification based on a
coupled CFD-FEM method
Y. Zhang, T. Lu ⇑
School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In the pressurizer surge line, the phenomenon of thermal stratification may induce thermal stress and
Received 30 April 2016 thermal deformation. Excessive thermal stress may result in thermal fatigue of the pipe structure, and
Received in revised form 18 April 2017 excessive thermal deformation may destroy the pipe supports. The phenomenon of thermal stratification,
Accepted 23 April 2017
and the induced thermal stress and thermal deformation in the pressurizer surge line would pose a threat
on the safe operation of the nuclear power plants (NPPs). Therefore, it is very important to make an anal-
ysis to the thermal stratification, thermal stress and thermal deformation of the pressurizer surge line. In
Keywords:
this study, a detailed unsteady-state computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis involving conjugate
Nuclear power plants (NPPs)
Pressurizer surge line
heat transfer (CHT) analysis is performed to obtain the transient temperature distributions of the pres-
Thermal stratification surizer surge line under an overall out-surge case, and the thermal loads from the CFD calculations are
Thermal stress then transferred to ANSYS Workbench Mechanical as body temperature loads for obtaining the transient
Thermal deformation thermal stress and the transient thermal deformation. With the coupled computational fluid dynamics-
Coupled CFD-FEM method finite element method (CFD-FEM) analysis, the transient response characteristic of the surge line sub-
jected to transient thermal stratification loadings are investigated and analyzed quantitatively. The posi-
tions where the maximal thermal stress occurs and where the maximal pipeline displacement occurs are
determined, and the method for determining the degree of thermal deformation in the cross-section has
been proposed. The coupled CFD-FEM method and the obtained conclusions in this study will be helpful
for the design of the pipeline structures and the pipe supports to reduce the structural failure related
safety accident.
Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
In Pressurizer Water Reactor (PWR) systems (U.S. NRC Techni-
cal Training Center), the pressurizer locates on hot legs in primary
loop for controlling the pressure of the reactor coolant system
(Moghanaki and Rahgoshay, 2014), and the pressurizer surge line
is usually referred to the long curved piping system connecting
the pressurizer and the hot leg in primary loop (Zhang et al.,
2016). In the actual operating conditions, the temperature of the
water in the pressurizer is generally higher than that of the water
in the primary loop. When these two fluids at different tempera-
tures mix slowly in the pressurizer surge line, hot water with small
density tend to float upward and cold water with large density
tend to sink down. The upper portion of the pipe gradually become
hotter than the lower portion and the temperature gradient grad-
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: likesurge@sina.com (T. Lu).
ually appears in the radial section of the pipeline with these trends,
called thermal stratification (Kweon et al., 2008). Thermal stratifi-
cation of the pipeline structure may induce thermal stress and
thermal deformation in the pressurizer surge line. Thermal stress
in the surge line may lead to thermal fatigue and even fatigue fail-
ure of the pipeline structure. Thermal deformation in the surge line
may lead to larger displacement in the pipe structure and greater
force in the pipe supports than expected, and excessively large dis-
placement can even destroy the pipe supports (such as the spring
support, the damping brace, and the rigid support). Thermal strat-
ification in the pressurizer surge line would pose a threat on the
safe operation of nuclear power plant, and therefore, the U.S.
NRC has released the Bulletin 88-08 (U.S. NRC, 1988a) and the Bul-
letin 88-11 (U.S. NRC, 1988b) announcements that require all in
service and under construction nuclear power plants to make an
analysis and argumentation to the thermal stratification of the
pressurizer surge line. Based on the analyses above, thermal strat-
ification, thermal stress and thermal deformation are the main

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anucene.2017.04.034
0306-4549/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
254 Y. Zhang, T. Lu / Annals of Nuclear Energy 108 (2017) 253–267
subjects of research in the pressurizer surge line, and both the
thermal stress and the thermal deformation are induced by the
flow and heat transfer of the fluid in the pipeline.
The phenomenon of thermal stratification in the pressurizer
surge line has been studied by many researchers with the experi-
mental (Kim et al., 2005; Qiao et al., 2014; Takeuchi et al., 1999)
and the numerical simulation (Jo and Kang, 2010; Kang et al.,
2011; Rasool et al., 2012; Selvam et al., 2015) methods. Qiao
et al. (2014) have carried out experimental studies on a 1/3 scaled
model for the investigation of thermal stratification phenomenon
in a pressurizer surge line with the standard type T thermalcou-
ples, and the Richardson number has been used as the similarity
criterion number for the inlet velocities of both the hot leg and
the surge line. The CFD simulation has also been verified to be a
good way of studying and capturing the phenomenon of thermal
stratification, and the results of the CFD simulations can be well
agreeable with the experiments if the conjugate heat transfer (Jo
and Kang, 2010; Kang et al., 2011) and the grid quality (Rasool
et al., 2012) have been considered and handled well in the numer-
ical simulations. Large-eddy simulation (LES) is a well known use-
ful way of capturing flow details such as velocity, temperature and
vortex. Zhang et al. (2016) have studied thermal stratification and
turbulent penetration in a pressurizer surge line under an overall
out-surge condition with the LES model, and characteristic param-
eters such as the normalized mean temperature, the root-mean
square (RMS) temperature, the mean velocity, and the RMS veloc-
ity have been employed to represent the state of flow and heat
transfer of the fluid in the pressurizer surge line. Lu et al. (2013)
have studied thermal stratification in an elbow branch pipe of a
tee junction with the LES model, and they (Lu et al., 2015) propose
a method to reduce temperature fluctuations in the elbow pipe by
a vortex breaker based on the above mechanism and research
method. To sum up, the phenomenon of thermal stratification in
the pressurizer surge line has obtained widespread recognitions
and indepth studies by the former researchers, and both the exper-
imental and theoretical research methods are mature and effective.
Thermal stress which induced by the fluid flow and heat trans-
fer in the pipeline of nuclear power plant has aroused more and
more attentions in recent years, and it has been studied by many
researchers using the experimental method (Kuschewski et al.,
2013) and theoretical analysis method (Ensel et al., 1995;
Grebner and Höfler, 1995; Yu et al., 1997). With the development
of the CFD and FEM, many researchers have carried out their
research using the CFD-FEM coupling method (Kamaya, 2014a,b;
Kim et al., 2013; Liu et al., 2013; Zhu et al., 2014). Kim et al.
(2013) and Liu et al. (2013) have used the CFD software CFX or Flu-
ent to compute the heat transfer between fluid and pipe, and have
used the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software ANSYS Multi-
physics to calculate thermal stress with the temperature fields
obtained by CFD calculation. Zhu et al. (2014) have study the flow
field, shear stress distribution and deformation of three-limb pipe
based on the software ANSYS Workbench with the coupled CFD-
FEM method. Because of the coupled simulation in their study is
based on the steady state calculation, only limited information of
the fluid and the pipe structure can be obtained and discussed. In
the study of Kamaya (2014a,b), the coupled CFD-FEM method is
employed to calculated thermal stress in the bend pipe and the
T-junction, and thermal fatigue of the pipe structure is also esti-
mated with the thermal stress obtained by the coupled calculation.
Totally speaking, the coupled CFD-FEM method is becoming a more
and more popular method to calculate thermal stress of a pipe
under complex flow and heat transfer conditions, and the coupled
CFD-FEM simulations carried out by the former researchers are
mainly based on a steady state calculation. Therefore, it is mean-
ingful to carry out research on the unsteady-state thermal stress
which induced by the unsteady-state fluid flow and heat transfer
in the pipeline based on an unsteady-state calculation.
Thermal deformation is another safety related issue induced by
the flow and heat transfer of the fluid, and these problems become
more serious in the pipeline which is long and thin (such as the
pressuizer surge line). Different from the thermal stress, there
are relatively few researchers studying the thermal deformation
which caused by the fluid flow and heat transfer at present. Jo
et al. (2003) and Jhung and Choi (2008) have studied the thermal
deformation of the pressurizer surge line with the FEA software
ANSYS, and a simplified temperature field of thermal stratification
have been employed for thermal deformation analysis. Kang et al.
(2011) have studied the thermal stress and thermal deformation of
the pressurizer surge line subjected to thermal stratification with
one-way CFD-FEM coupled simulation. Some researchers have
estimated the thermal stress and thermal deformation which
induced by thermal stratification of the pressurizer surge line by
reducing the complicated 3D problems to a combinatorial 1D and
2D problems. Therefore, the thermal deformation of the pipeline
caused by the fluid flow and heat transfer still need further study,
and the coupled CFD-FEM method proposed in this study may be
one of the most promising way for studying thermal deformation
of the pressurizer surge line under complex flow and heat transfer
condition.
In this work, an unsteady-state calculation based on the cou-
pled CFD-FEM method is carried out in the software platform
ANSYS Workbench 16.0 for obtaining the transient thermal stres-
ses and thermal deformations during the development of thermal
stratification in the pressurizer surge line. The temperatures, the
thermal stresses, and the thermal deformations (pipeline displace-
ment and thermal deformation of the cross-section) are all
extracted and analyzed. Details of the method and the results are
discussed and displayed as follows.
2. Mathematical model
2.1. Physical model
The physical model of the pressurizer surge line is shown in
Fig. 1. The main pipe with cross-section of 130 mm
5 mm and
the surge line with cross-section of 65 mm
4.5 mm are perpen-
dicularly intersecting together, and both of the pipes are made of
AISI 304L stainless steel (the material properties are shown in
Table 1). For better studying the phenomenon of thermal stratifica-
tion in the surge line, several monitoring cross-sections have been
defined for the arrangement of measured points in the experiment.
These cross-sections in the surge line are determined by L/D, and
here, L and D represent the length and the external diameter of
the surge line respectively. In the numerical simulations, the direc-
tion of the x, y, z axis are shown in Fig. 1(a), and the origin of the
coordinates has been set to the center point of the inlet section
of the main pipe. All other physical dimensions of the surge line
can be seen in Fig. 1(b).
In this study, the fluid is water as working fluid. The pressurizer
contains relative hot water, and there is water flowing from pres-
surizer to the surge line as well as water flowing in the opposite
direction (Zhang et al., 2016) (as shown in Fig. 1(b)). As shown in
Fig. 1(b), cold water at temperature of 322.04 K and velocity of
12 m/s flows in the main pipe, and the inlet temperature of the
surge line is 487.21 K. Because of the operating condition here is
an overall out-surge case (Kang et al., 2011), the vertical surge line
which connects the main pipe and the pressurizer is initially filled
with stagnant cold water at the temperature of 322.04 K in the
experiment and numerical simulation.
 Y. Zhang, T. Lu / Annals of Nuclear Energy 108 (2017) 253–267 255

Fig. 1. Physical model of the main pipe and the surge line (unit: mm) (Zhang et al., 2016).

Table 1 the wall thickness. e.g. in the monitory point 29D-90°-inner, the
Material properties of the pipe. 29D, 90° and inner represent the point in the section 29D, rotation
Symbol Property Material SS AISI 304 L angle of 90° from the Line-0°-outer and the inner wall of the pipe
q Density (kg/m ) 3
7900 respectively.
cp Specific heat (J/kg K) 493.0
k Thermal conductivity (W/m K) 15.29 2.2. Mathematical model
a Thermal expansion (1/K) 15.67e6
E Young’s modulus (GPa) 193
In this study, the phenomenon of thermal stratification is sim-
t Poisson’s ratio 0.3
ulated with the CFD software FLUENT 16.0, and the LES model is
employed to capture the details of the flow and heat transfer of
the fluid in the surge line. The governing equation used in this
To make quantitative analysis, monitory points have been set in
work is the LES control equation, which includes mass equation,
the surge line. The distribution of the cross-sections is shown in
momentum equation and energy equation (Lu et al., 2013).
Fig. 1(a), and the distribution of the monitory points in each sec-
Mass conservation equation:
tion is shown in Fig. 2(b). In the physical model of the pressurizer
surge line (as shown in Fig. 2(a)), monitory points in each section i
@ q @ qu
þ ¼0 ð1Þ
start from the Line-0°-outer, and are distinguished by the rotation @t @xi
angle (the direction of rotation has been identified in Fig. 2). As
Momentum conservation equation:
shown in Fig. 2 (b), four monitory lines (Line-0°-outer, Line-90°-
i @ qu
@ qu i u
j 
@q @
outer, Line-180°-outer, Line-270°-outer) have been defined in the þ ¼  SM;buoy þ ð2lSij  sij Þ ð2Þ
model of the pressurizer surge line, and in each cross-section, eight @t @xj @xi @xj
monitory points have been defined based on the rotation angle and

Fig. 2. Distributions of the monitory points in the cross sections of the pressurizer surge line.
256 Y. Zhang, T. Lu / Annals of Nuclear Energy 108 (2017) 253–267

Fig. 3. The schematic diagram of the coupled CFD-FEM analysis for the pressurizer surge line.

Fig. 4. Mesh of the pressurizer surge line for the CFD and FEM simulation.

Table 2
Details of three meshes in the simulations.

Mesh ID Max Element Mesh Size Grid spacing of the first boundary layer Number of layer (boundary layer/ pipe thickness) Mesh cells Dt t total (s)
1 2.5 mm 0.1 mm 13/6 2359406 0.005 s 300 s
2 4 mm 0.2 mm 10/5 873030 0.005 s 1500 s
3 6 mm 0.5 mm 6/4 208386 0.005 s 300 s

In Eq. (2) 
Sij is strain tensor, which is defined as: SGS model usually uses Eddy-viscosity model:


i @ u
Sij ¼ 1 @ u j
þ ð3Þ skk dij
2 @xj @xi sij  ¼ 2lt Sij ð5Þ
e
The SGS Reynolds stress can be defined as:
where s is SGS dimension stress, lt is SGS turbulence viscosity, S is
sij ¼ qui uj  qui uj ð4Þ
defined as the solved strain rate tensor.
 Y. Zhang, T. Lu / Annals of Nuclear Energy 108 (2017) 253–267 257

Fig. 5. Comparisons of the temperatures calculated with different grids for the grid independence test.

SGS Smagorinsky-Lily model is used for turbulence viscosity: lt @ T

qT 00 u00j ¼  ð9Þ
Prt @xj
lt ¼ qL2s jSj2 ð6Þ
The thermal stratification flow in the pressurizer surge line is
where Ls is the mixing length for the subgrid scales. Ls is computed
the turbulent flow which takes account of the effect of the buoy-
using:
ancy lift, and the buoyancy lift is considered by the Eq. (10).
Ls ¼ minðkd; C s V 1=3 Þ ð7Þ SM;buoy ¼ ðq  qref Þg ð10Þ
where k is the von Karman constant of 0.42, d is the distance to the
After the CFD simulations have been done, the obtaining body
closest wall, C s is the Smagorinsky constant, and V is the volume of
temperature loads generated by the CFD simulations are then
the computational cell.
imported in the model of the pressurizer surge line for structural
Energy conservation equation:
analysis in ANSYS Workbench Mechanical. Most metals expand
 
@  @ @ k @ T @ with heat, and the metal structure will produce deformations if
ðqTÞ þ ðqT u
j Þ ¼ þ ðqT 00 u00j Þ ð8Þ there is no constraint. The pressurizer surge line in practical pro-
@t @xj @xj C P @xj @xj
ject generally undertaking many constraints from other structures
where qT 00 u00j is heat flux, it can be modeled by simple gradient and itself, therefore, thermal deformation can’t be uncontrolled,
approximation: and thermal stress will be produced. Thermal stress can be calcu-
lated by the Eq. (11):
frg ¼ ½D  ðfeg  fe0 gÞ ð11Þ
Where ½D is the elastic matrix, and fe0 g is the thermal strain
Table 3
which denotes deformations caused by temperature and can be
Boundary conditions of the CFD simulations.
defined as:
Inlet Main Tc 322.04 K
uc 12 m/s (fully developed velocity) fe0 g ¼ aT ½ 1 1 1 0 0 0 T ð12Þ
Inlet Branch Th 487.21 K
uh User Defined Function (UDF) In Eq. (12), a is the coefficient of thermal expansion, and T is the
(Zhang et al., 2016) temperature.
Fluid-structure interface (Inner Conjugate heat transfer (CHT) The total stain feg in the Eq. (11) can be calculated by the fol-
wall of the pipe)
Outer wall of the pipe Heat insulation
lowing Eq. (13) in FEM analysis:
Outlet Outflow
feg ¼ ½B  fdge ð13Þ
258 Y. Zhang, T. Lu / Annals of Nuclear Energy 108 (2017) 253–267

Fig. 6. Simulations for obtaining fully developed velocity and testing the grid independence.

Fig. 7. Thermophysical property parameters of the fluid in the CFD simulation.

Table 4 nomenon of thermal stratification is simulated using the CFD soft-

Boundary conditions of the FEM simulations. ware FLUENT. Transient thermal stresses and thermal
Inlet Main Fixed support deformations (including the pipeline displacement and the cross-
Inlet of the surge Fixed support section deformation) are calculated using ANSYS Workbench
line Mechanical. In the FEM simulations, the temperature fields of the
Pipe Structure Imported load Imported Body
pipe structure obtained by the CFD simulation are imported suc-
Temperature loads
Inner wall of the Temperature boundary Imported temperature cessively with a certain time interval as body temperature loads
pipe condition fields in FSI for the transient structural calculation.
Absolute pressure Pabs = 1.96 MPa
Outer wall of the Temperature boundary Perfectly Insulated
pipe condition
3.1. Grid in the numerical simulation
Absolute pressure Pabs = 0.1 MPa
Outlet Displacement Ux = 0 On applying LES to the CFD simulation of thermal stratification
in the pressurizer surge line, the main difficulty is huge computa-
tional cost. The LES model generally requires high quality grid and
Where ½B is the stain matrix, and fdge is the nodal displacement small time step size, and the actual time for the development of
which can be obtained by solving the equation as follows: thermal stratification is long. In this study, both the fluid region
and the solid (the surge line) region are meshed by hexagonal
½K  fdg ¼ fQgT ð14Þ structured grids on the mesh generation software platform ICEM
CFD 16.0 to balance the grid quality and the grid quantity. The
In Eq. (14), ½K is the stiffness matrix, and fQ gT is the thermal
CFD simulation and the FEM simulation share the same set of solid
load.
grid in this work for more convenient and accurate transfer of body
temperature loads.
3. Coupled CFD-FEM analysis Fig. 4 shows the mesh of the pressurizer surge line for the CFD
and FEM simulations. In the CFD simulations, both the mesh of the
A coupled CFD-FEM analysis based on ANSYS Workbench 16.0 fluid zone and the mesh of the solid zone are employed for calcu-
has been carried out in this study. As shown in Fig. 3, the phe- lation. In the FEM simulation, only the mesh of the solid zone is
 Y. Zhang, T. Lu / Annals of Nuclear Energy 108 (2017) 253–267
employed for calculation. As shown in Fig. 4, the maximum inter-
val size of the grid in the whole geometry model of the surge line is
4 mm. The thickness of the first grid in the boundary layer is
0.2 mm, the number of the layers in the boundary layer is 10,
and the growth factor of grid spacing is 1.3 (as shown in Fig. 4(e)
and the Mesh 2 in Table 2). This grid thickness can guarantee that
the first grid is divided in the viscous sublayer (the corresponding
y+ < 5 according to Zhang et al. (2016)), and the near wall region is
supposed to be sufficiently resolved by the LES simulations. For
more accurate solution of heat conduction calculation in the pipe
structure, grids in the direction of the wall thickness are densified,
and the number of the layer is five.
To verify the quality of the grid used in the coupled CFD-FEM
simulation, the grid independence test is carried out in this study.
As shown in Table 2, Mesh 1, Mesh 2 and Mesh 3 represent three
different mesh files of the structured grids generated by the ICEM
CFD 16.0. As has been discussed before, Mesh 2 is finally selected
by us for the coupled analysis. Comparing with Mesh 2, grids in
Mesh 1 are more intensive (the total mesh cells are about 2.4 mil-
lion), and grids in Mesh 3 are more sparse (the total mesh cells are
about 0.2 million). Further details of the meshes in grid indepen-
dence test are shown in Table 2. In all the CFD simulations for
the grid independence test, a constant time step of 5 ms is finally
used with the application of the courant condition, and this is suit-
able with respect to the developing turbulence time-scales in the
mixing layer (Zhang et al., 2016).
Fig. 5 shows the comparisons of the temperatures calculated
with different grids for the grid independence test. Here, Fig. 5
(a) and (b) show the temperatures in different monitoring points
at different times. Fig. 5(c) shows the temperature distribution
along the monitoring line Line-0°-inner at t = 300 s. Fig. 5(d) shows
the temperature distribution along the monitoring line 27D-outer
at t = 300 s. By the grid independence test, it can be found that
the temperatures calculated with Mesh 2 agree well with that cal-
culated with Mesh1, and there exist big difference between the
temperatures calculated with Mesh 3 and the temperatures calcu-
lated with Mesh 1 and Mesh 2. It means that although the grid
quantity of Mesh 2 is less than that of Mesh 1, the accuracy of
the results calculated with Mesh 2 is as high as that calculated with
Mesh 1. According to the above analysis, the meshing scheme of
Fig. 8. Boundary conditions and constraint conditions for the coupled CFD-FEM calculation.
259
Mesh 2 are finally determined, and the subsequent simulations
of CFD and FEM are calculated with this mesh file.
3.2. Boundary conditions for the coupled CFD-FEM calculation
As has been mentioned above, the CFD simulation is employed
to capture the phenomenon of thermal stratification and generate
the body temperature loads for the FEM simulation. The boundary
conditions of the CFD simulation are shown in Table 3.
In order to obtain the fully developed velocity distribution in
the main pipe and eliminate the influence of the entrance effect,
a long and straight (>100D) model of the pipe is simulated in
advance, and the obtained velocity distributions in the outlet (as
shown in Fig. 6(a)) are imported in the model of the surge line as
the inlet velocity of the main pipe with the profile command in
the FLUENT. To analog the actual experimental working condition
of the overall out-surge case, the inlet velocity of the surge line has
been defined as stepped piecewise function by the User Defined
Function (UDF) according to Zhang et al. (2016) (as shown in
Fig. 6(b)). The boundary condition in the fluid-structure interface
(inner wall of the pipe) is conjugate heat transfer (CHT), and the
boundary condition in the outer wall of the pipe is heat insulation.
When thermal stratification occurs in pressurizer surge line in
this study, the temperature difference between cold and hot fluid
can be up to 150 K, and the variation of thermophysical properties
of the fluid (such as the density, the specific heat capacity, the ther-
mal conductivity and the viscosity) are so considerable that cannot
be ignored (as can be seen in Fig. 7). Therefore, all the thermophys-
ical properties in the CFD software FLUENT are defined as piece-
wise linear functions depends on the temperature of the fluid.
After the CFD calculation, the body temperature loads of ther-
mal stratification in the pressurizer surge line are obtained and
can then be imported in the software ANSYS Workbench Mechan-
ical as a boundary condition for the FEM calculation. All the bound-
ary conditions and the constraint conditions in the FEM simulation
are shown in Table 4. The constraint condition in the inlet of the
main pipe and the pressurizer surge line are fixed support, and
the constraint condition in the outlet of the main pipe is displace-
ment constraint (Ux = 0).
260 Y. Zhang, T. Lu / Annals of Nuclear Energy 108 (2017) 253–267

As shown in Fig. 8(a), in the inner wall of pipe, the temperature sure of the pressurizer surge line according to Zhang et al.
boundary condition is the imported temperature fields in the (2016). In the outer wall of the pipe, the temperature boundary
Fluid-Solid Interface (FSI), and the pressure boundary condition is condition is perfectly insulated because of the heat insulation treat-
the absolute pressure Pabs = 1.96 MPa which is the working pres- ment has been conducted in the pressurizer surge line in the exper-

Fig. 9. Temperature contours of the pressurizer surge line during the development of thermal stratification.
 Y. Zhang, T. Lu / Annals of Nuclear Energy 108 (2017) 253–267
iment study, and the pressure boundary condition is the absolute
pressure Pabs = 0.1 MPa which is the environmental pressure.
4. Results and discussion
In this study, the total calculation time of the CFD simulation is
1500 s. The body temperature loads of the surge line generated by
the CFD calculation are then imported in the FEM simulation with
the time interval 5 s, and the total calculation time of the FEM sim-
ulation is 1500 s. After the coupled CFD-FEM calculations, the tem-
perature, the thermal stress and the thermal deformation in any
point of the surge line can be obtained, and both the qualitative
analysis and the quantitative analysis are shown as follows.
4.1. Thermal stratification in the pressurizer surge line
Fig. 9 shows the temperature contours of the pressurizer surge
line during the development of thermal stratification, and Fig. 9
(a)-(a’), (b)-(b’), (c)-(c’) and (d)-(d’) are the contours of inner wall
and the outer wall at 5 s, 500 s, 1000 s and 1500 s respectively. In
Fig. 9, it can be found that the thermal stratification phenomenon
develops gradually toward the main pipe, and the developing pro-
cess is relatively slow. Because of the thermal stratification phe-
nomenon has little change within 5 s, the time interval for
importing the body temperature loads to FEM simulation is even-
tually determined as 5 s.
During the total calculation time of 1500 s, a period of 113 s
have been determined for making quantitative analysis, and within
Fig. 10. Comparisons of the temperatures obtained by the experiment and the numerical simulation in different monitoring points during 113 s.
261
this period of time, the calculated temperatures are closest to the
experimental measured value. Fig. 10 shows the comparisons of
the temperatures obtained by the experiment and the numerical
simulation in different monitoring points during 113 s. In Fig. 10
(a) and (b), it can be found that the temperatures in different mon-
itoring points of different cross-sections obtained by the numerical
simulation agree well with the experimental measured values,
which means the CFD model used in this study can effectively ana-
log the developing process of thermal stratification and capture the
characteristics of thermal stratification phenomenon. It is worth
mentioning that, as shown in Fig. 10(a), the top-bottom (0°–180°)
temperature difference in the 27D obtained by the numerical sim-
ulation is larger than that obtained by the experiment. And it is
because both the boundary conditions and the fluid properties in
the numerical simulation are more ideal than the experimental
working conditions.
To test the accuracy of the CFD calculation, the normalized
mean temperature is employed to show the time-averaged tem-
perature distribution in the surge line, and the normalized mean
temperature is defined as (Lu et al., 2013):
1X N
T ¼ T ð15Þ
N i¼1 i
where N is the total number of sampling times, and T⁄i is the instan-
taneous normalized temperature.
Ti  Tc
T i ¼ ð16Þ
Th  Tc
262 Y. Zhang, T. Lu / Annals of Nuclear Energy 108 (2017) 253–267

Fig. 11. Thermal stresses and pipeline displacements during the developing process of thermal stratification.
 Y. Zhang, T. Lu / Annals of Nuclear Energy 108 (2017) 253–267
Fig. 12. Comparisons of temperatures, thermal stresses and pipeline displacements in different monitoring points.
Here, Ti is the instantaneous temperature, Tc is the cold water
temperature in the main inlet, and Th is the hot water temperature
in the surge line inlet (as shown in Table 3).
As shown in Fig. 10(c) and (d), for the normalized mean temper-
atures in different monitoring points along Line-0°-outer and 27D-
outer, the absolute error of the numerical results are in the range of
25% of the experimental data except for the point 20D-0°-outer
where the normalized mean temperature is small. On the whole,
the numerical results are in good agreement with the experimental
data, which validates the accuracy of the CFD simulation in the study.
4.2. Thermal stress and pipeline displacement in the pressurizer surge
line
Fig. 11 shows the contours of thermal stress and pipeline dis-
placement of the pressurizer surge line during the developing pro-
cess of thermal stratification, and Fig. 11(a)-(a’), (b)-(b’), (c)-(c’),
(d)-(d’) corresponding to the contours of thermal stress and pipe-
line displacement at 5 s, 500 s, 1000 s, 1500 s respectively. For bet-
ter displaying the results, the thermal deformation of the surge line
are plotted with the scheme 2
auto deformation in the CFD-Post
16.0. From these figures, it can be found that both the thermal
stress and the thermal deformation of the pressurizer surge line
change with the development of thermal stratification. The maxi-
mum thermal stress tends to occur in the position near the bound-
263
ary which has constraint (such as the inlet of the main pipe, the
inlet of the surge line and the outlet of the main pipe), and the
maximum deflection tends to occur in the position far away from
the constraints (such as the pipe section between the cross-
section 8D and 14D of the surge line).
Fig. 12 shows the comparisons of temperatures, thermal stres-
ses and pipeline displacements in different monitoring points
during the developing process of thermal stratification, and
Fig. 12(a)–(d) corresponding to the values of monitoring points in
the cross-section 29D, 14D, 9D and 3D respectively. As shown in
Fig. 12, the maximal thermal deformation appears in the section
14D which is far away from the constraints, and the maximal ther-
mal stress appears in the section 29D which nears the constraint
boundary. With the development of thermal stratification, thermal
deformation increase gradually, but the thermal stress may not
increase (as shown in Fig. 12(b) and (c)). In Fig. 12(a), it can be
found that although the degree of thermal stratification is large
in the section 29D, the total pipeline displacement may not very
large here. Besides, it can also be found that there has big differ-
ence between the total deflections of different monitoring points
in the section 29D, which means that thermal deformation may
occur in this cross-section. In the section 3D as shown in Fig. 12
(d), there is no thermal stratification phenomenon, therefore, the
thermal stress and thermal deformation here are induced by the
thermal deformation in other position of the surge line.
264 Y. Zhang, T. Lu / Annals of Nuclear Energy 108 (2017) 253–267

Fig. 13 shows the monitoring temperature, thermal stress and
all component deflections of the surge line at the computation time
1500 s, and four monitoring lines (Line-0°-outer, Line-90°-outer,
Line-180°-outer, Line-270°-outer) are employed to display the dis-
tribution of the monitoring values in the surge line. In Fig. 13(a), it
can be found that the maximal top-bottom (0°–180°) temperature
difference occurs in the section 27D at the computation time
1500 s, which matches well with the experiment, and the phe-
nomenon of thermal stratification mainly occurs in the horizontal
part of the surge line. Fig. 13(b) shows the thermal stress of the
surge line at 1500 s. As previously mentioned, thermal stress is
generally large in the position near the boundary which has con-
straint (1D and 29D), and in the position which is far away from
the constraint boundary (9D and 14D), thermal stress is rather
small. Fig. 13(c) shows the total deflections along the four monitor-
ing lines, and it can be found that the maximal total deflection
occurs in the cross-section of 14D and 9D, which is consistent with
the conclusions from above. Fig. 13(d)–(f) are the component
deflections along the X axis, Y axis and Z axis at 1500 s respec-
tively. From these figures, it can be found that the maximal deflec-
tion along the X axis occurs in the cross-section 29D, the maximal
deflection along the Y axis (Y direction) occurs in the cross-
section 9D, and the maximal deflection along the Z axis (+Z direc-
tion) occurs in the cross-section 14D. It can also be found that the

Fig. 13. Monitoring values of temperature, thermal stress and all component deflections of the surge line at 1500 s.
 Y. Zhang, T. Lu / Annals of Nuclear Energy 108 (2017) 253–267 265

Fig. 14. Comparison of the space deformations along different monitoring lines of the surge line at 0 s and 1500 s.

Fig. 15. Thermal stress and thermal deformation in the cross-section 27D.

thermal deformation of the surge line mainly occurs in the plane means that thermal deformation may occur in these cross-
YZ. It is worth mentioning that, in the section 9D, 14D, 27D and sections of the surge line.
29D as shown in Fig. 13(c), the total deflections along the four Synthesizing the three component deflections in the above
monitoring lines are not overlapped with each other, and this Fig. 13(d)–(f), the space deformations along the different monitor-
266 Y. Zhang, T. Lu / Annals of Nuclear Energy 108 (2017) 253–267
ing lines of the pressurizer surge line can be obtained, and the
curves of the space deformation can help us studying the thermal
deflection in the space quantitatively. Fig. 14 shows the compar-
ison of the space deformations along different monitoring lines of
the surge line at 0 s (initial time) and 1500 s (terminal time), and
the deflections of all the monitoring lines at 1500 s are magnified
100 times for more clearly observation. Comparing Fig. 14(a)–(d),
it can be found that there is no big difference between the curves
of the space deformation in different monitory lines, which means
that the distortion of the cross-section is relative small comparing
with the total deflection of the surge line. As shown in Fig. 14, the
projections of the space deformation of the surge line onto the
plane XY, XZ, YZ are obtained and plotted, and the total deflection
of the pressurizer surge line under the current working condition is
found to occur mainly in the plane YZ as has been discussed before.
4.3. Thermal deformation of the cross-sections in the pressurizer surge
line
Based on the above discussion, besides the pipeline displace-
ment, thermal deformation may also occur in the cross-section of
the surge line (as shown in Figs. 12(a) and 13(c)). Fig. 15 shows the
thermal stress and thermal deformation in the cross-section 27D,
and the contour of thermal deformation is plotted with the scheme
Fig. 16. Thermal deformations of different cross-sections in the pressurizer surge line at 1500 s.
2
auto deformation in the CFD-Post 16.0. Due to the thermal strat-
ification is symmetrical about the plane YZ, both the thermal stress
and thermal deformation are symmetrical. As shown in Fig. 15(a),
the maximal thermal stress occurs in the top (0°), and the minimal
thermal stress occurs in the left and right side (about 90° and
270°) of the section 27D. In Fig. 15(b), it can be found that, in the sec-
tion 27D, although the maximal temperature occurs in the top sec-
tion, the minimal thermal deformation occurs there.
To determine the thermal deformation of the cross-section
quantitatively, the deflections of different monitoring points are
extracted and plotted along the circumferential direction of the
cross-section (such as the line 29D-outer, 27D-outer, et al.), and
the thermal deformations of different cross-sections in the pres-
surizer surge line are shown in Fig. 16. Fig. 16(a) shows the total
deflection distributions of the section 29D, 27D and 24D, it can
be found that although the pipeline displacement in the section
24D is larger than that in other sections, the thermal deformation
of the cross-section in 24D is smaller than that in other sections.
Among the three cross-sections, the maximal thermal deformation
of the cross-section occurs in 27D. Fig. 16(b) shows the tempera-
ture distribution and total deflection distribution along the line
27D-outer, it can be found that, in the section 27D, the maximal
thermal deformation occurs in the position where the temperature
is the smallest, and vice versa.
 Y. Zhang, T. Lu / Annals of Nuclear Energy 108 (2017) 253–267
The total deflection as shown in Fig. 16(a) and (b) includes the
thermal deformation of the pipeline and the thermal deformation
of the cross-section. In order to analyze the thermal deformation
of the cross-section separately, the deflections of the pipeline
diameter are employed by us, and can be defined as:
R0 180 ¼ D0 180  D0 180 ¼ D0 180  D
R90 270 ¼ D90 270  D90 270 ¼ D90 270  D
Here, D is the diameter without thermal deformation, and D⁄ is
the diameter with thermal deformation at 1500 s.
According to the above discussion, the degree of thermal defor-
mation in the cross-section can be determined by comparing the
deflections of the pipeline diameter. The bigger the difference
between R0°-180° and R90°-270°, the larger the degree of thermal
deformation in the cross-section, and vice versa. As shown in
Fig. 16(d), in the pipe section 14D-24D where the pipeline dis-
placement is big, the degree of thermal deformation in the cross-
section is small. In the section 27D and 29D, the degree of thermal
deformation is large, and the thermal deformation mainly occurs in
the direction 90°–270°.
5. Conclusions
In this study, a detailed unsteady-state CFD analysis involving
CHT analysis is performed to obtain the transient temperature dis-
tributions of the pressurizer surge line under an overall out-surge
case, and then the thermal loads from the CFD calculations are
transferred to ANSYS Workbench Mechanical as body temperature
loads for obtaining the transient thermal stress and the transient
thermal deformation. With the coupled CFD-FEM analysis, the
transient thermal stress and thermal deformation of the surge line
subjected to transient thermal stratification loadings are investi-
gated. The following conclusions are drawn.
(1) The thermal stratification is the root cause of thermal
stress and thermal deformation in the pressurizer surge
line, and the distribution of the temperature field determi-
nes the distributions of thermal stress and thermal
deflection.
(2) With the development of thermal stratification in the pres-
surizer surge line, the thermal stress is induced and devel-
oped gradually, but the thermal stress may not always
increase. Generally speaking, the biggish thermal stress
tends to occur in the position near the boundary which
has constraint.
(3) The thermal deformation of the pipeline increase gradually
with the development of thermal stratification. And
although the thermal deformation is induced by thermal
stratification, the pipeline displacement may be small in
the cross-section where the degree of thermal stratification
is large. Generally speaking, the biggish pipeline displace-
ment tends to occur in the position far away from the con-
straint boundaries.
(4) The thermal deformation of the cross-section may also be
induced by the thermal stratification, and the degree of ther-
mal deformation in the cross-section can be determined by
comparing the deflections of the pipeline diameter. For the
pressurizer surge line in this study, in the position where
267
the pipeline displacement is large, the degree of thermal
deformation of the cross-section tends to be small, and vice
versa.
Acknowledgements
ð17Þ
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foun-
ð18Þ
dation of China (No. 51276009), and Program for New Century
Excellent Talents in University (No. NCET-13-0651).
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