Temperature profiling of a cylindrical Nuclear Fuel Rod through numerical and computational techniques

Abstract

Accurate prediction of temperature profile of the fuel rod in a nuclear reactor is very important due to safety factors. The temperature distribution in steady state operation in the nuclear reactor is determined by thermal balance between heat generated and heat transferred to the coolant. Various computational techniques have been used in the past to predict the temperature profile of the fuel rod. This paper attempts a numerical solution to the heat transfer problem of a cylindrical nuclear fuel rod having uniform generation throughout the body, and heat transfer taking place through convection and radiation at the lateral surface. Solutions proposed through various computational methods i.e. Finite Difference Method (FDM), Finite Volume Method (FVM) and Finite Element Method (FEM) have been compared to analyze the accuracy of each such method.