Assessment of COMSOL Capabilities to Analyse the Thermo-Hydrodynamic Behaviour of the MSR Core

The present work is aimed at evaluating the capabilities of COMSOL Multiphysics® to treat heat transfer in Molten Salt Reactors (MSR). The analysed situation is represented by the molten salt in turbulent regime flowing through a cylindrical channel surrounded by graphite, with both the fluid and the solid generating power. A suitable validation framework has been set up on the basis of an ad hoc analytic solution for both velocity and temperature fields inside the fluid and the solid regions. For validation purposes, a code-to-code comparison has been also performed, using the fluid dynamics code FLUENT®.