Numerical Simulation of High Temperature Reactor Fuel Element Aerodynamic Lifting Process

In order to study the aerodynamic lifting process of high temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTR) fuel pebble, a method based on the numerical simulation of 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and the decoupling of three-degree of freedom (3-DOF) dynamics simulation was used to simulate the movement of the fuel pebble. The aerodynamic force of the fuel pebble in the lifting tube was calculated by using CFD. The trajectory of the fuel pebble in the transfer tube was calculated by using 3-DOF dynamics simulation, and verified by experiment. The results show that the tra-jectory and number of collisions of the fuel pebble can be predicted accurately by numerical simulation described in this paper, and this approach can be used in the simulation of aerodynamic lifting process of HTR fuel pebble.