Simulation of Thermal-Hydraulic Transients in Two-Channel CICC with Self-Consistent Boundary Conditions

The use of boundary conditions at the conductor ends, taken from the experiment, has recently allowed an accurate thermal-hydraulic simulation of both quench and heat slug transients in the two channel cable-in-conduit conductors (CICC), using the 2-fluid MITHRANDIR code. However, in order to be used as a design tool, i.e., to achieve a predictive capability, the code should be independent as much as possible of input from the experiment. Therefore it is necessary to couple MITHRANDIR to a hydraulic network simulator such as FLOWER, providing a self-consistent description of thermal-hydraulic transients in a cryogenic plant. We show here how the coupling is achieved and demonstrate the reliability of the coupled codes against quench and heat slug propagation runs from the QUELL experiment in the SULTAN facility at Villigen PSI, Switzerland. The results show good agreement with experimental data and with simulations performed using experimental boundary conditions. Different levels of detail in the modeling of the hydraulic network are investigated for different types of thermal-hydraulic transient.