Simulation of MHD Flows in Liquid Metal Blanket with Flow Channel Insert

A direct simulation of 3D liquid metal flow in the DCLL (Dual Coolant Lead Lithium) blanket is conducted to study the distribution of pressure and velocity influenced by different material properties of FCI (Flow Channel Insert). A consistent and conservative scheme and projection method on a collocated mesh (Ni et al., J Comp Phys 227 (2007)174-204 and 227 (2007) 205-228) are employed to solve the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations with the Lorentz force included based on an electrical potential formula. As an illustration, three blanket flows have been considered: liquid metal flow in a channel without FCI, with a silicon carbide FCI and with a FCI made of conductive material. It is shown that liquid metal flows in blanket with FCI are 3D developing flows. It is verified that: MHD pressure drop can be reduced by using silicon carbide FCI; PES (Pressure Equilibrium Slot) can balance the pressure difference between two sides of FCI near the slot but the pressure difference is still very large far away from PES; conductive FCI cannot reduce MHD pressure drop. Due to the leakage of current circuit across the slot, with PES opened at one side, a strong reversed velocity is observed in PES. The comparison of velocity distribution between numerical simulation and experiment from LEVI (Xu et al., ISFNT-9, 2009) is conducted. The difference shows that further experimental and numerical analysis is needed.