Development of a Rapid Turnaround Modeling Ability for PbLi Blanket Module

The ability to simulate magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) flow of liquid metals in fusion relevant conditions is vital to US interests in liquid breeder reactors. This project will use a software environment that has demonstrated unique capabilities in modeling such flows accurately in complex and realistic geometries. These calculations tend to be enormously time consuming due to the extreme sensitivity of flow variables to small changes, the range of length scales that are to be resolved at high field values, and the stiffness caused by the multi-physical nature of the problem. This project will pursue a systematic sequence of advancements to overcome these constraints. The Phase-I project showed promise in achieving an order of magnitude (or more) of speedup in the software. Hybrid grid and multi-grid features have been enabled in the code. A variety of implicit schemes and wall functions were studied, and run-time parameters were optimized. The Phase-II project will generalize these developments to complex flow situations. A friendly graphical interface will be developed such that the total time from geometry to solution is minimized. A series of wall functions will be added to the code, based on the customizations made in phase-I. Commercial Applications and other Benefits as described by the awardee: There is a lack of numerical modeling software (commercial or research) that can model complex geometry flows relevant to fusion blankets that involve MHD and strong interactions of the flow with electromagnetic fields. The acceleration techniques developed here will address that lack and also render the software attractive for uses in a much broader marketplace of commercial computational fluid dynamics software.