A Preliminary Fluid-Structure Coupling of NekRS and MOOSE via Cardinal

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a preliminary fluid-structure interaction simulation coupling NekRS and MOOSE via Cardinal, enabling modeling of complex nuclear reactor phenomena like flow-induced vibrations and core expansion.

Contribution

It introduces a novel coupling approach between NekRS, MOOSE, and Cardinal for fluid-structure interaction modeling in nuclear reactors.

Findings

Successful coupling of NekRS and MOOSE via Cardinal for FSI

Implementation of in-memory data transfer for efficient coupling

Preliminary 3-D FSI benchmark validation

Abstract

Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) is a significant phenomenon in most nuclear reactors, causing effects such as Flow-Induced Vibration (FIV) and thermally-driven Core-Radial Expansion (CRE). We demonstrate that Cardinal, an open-source coupling of NekRS and OpenMC to MOOSE, can be used for modelling FSI by coupling the Tensor Mechanics Module from the Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) to NekRS's Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) solver. The solid mechanics-thermal hydraulics coupling is implemented using efficient in-memory coupling and data transfers. We provide a preliminary demonstration of these capabilities with a 3-D FSI benchmark for an elastic block in crossflow.