Publications de Carlo Fiorina | EPFL Graph Search

PuMMA blind benchmark: Performance of high plutonium content MOX fuel under irradiation

Alessandro Scolaro, Carlo Fiorina, Edoardo Luciano Brunetto

This paper presents the results of the first phase of the benchmark exercise in the PuMMA project, aimed at extending the reliability of fuel performance codes for Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuels with high plutonium content. The exercise involved the simulation of ...

2025

Extension of GeN-Foam to departure from nucleate boiling prediction and validation against the OECD/NRC PSBT benchmark

Alessandro Scolaro, Carlo Fiorina, Hao Qin, Yuhang Niu

The prediction of departure from nucleate boiling (DNB) has always been a crucial aspect of thermal-hydraulic codes for the analysis of Light Water Reactors. In this paper, GeN-Foam, a multi-physics code developed based on OpenFOAM, has been enhanced to in ...

Elsevier Science Sa2023

Preliminary safety analysis of the TRANSMUTEX sub-critical reactor using the GeN-Foam multi-physics solver

Andreas Pautz, Carlo Fiorina, Thomas Arthur Louis Joseph Guilbaud

This work presents a preliminary safety analysis of the accelerator-driven system under development at TRANSMUTEX. It is a sub-critical lead-cooled fast reactor with a nominal power of 300 MWth having the following features: (1) an inert-matrix fuel; (2) a ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2023

Extension of GeN-Foam to modeling of boiling water and validation against the OECD/NRC PSBT benchmark

Stefan Radman, Carlo Fiorina, Ran Zhang, Hao Qin

The OpenFOAM-based GeN-Foam solver has recently been extended to allow simulating water boiling based on a porous-medium approach. This paper describes such extension and preliminarily validates it based on the OECD/NRC PSBT benchmark. Three benchmark exer ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA2023

Extension of the OFFBEAT fuel performance code to finite strains and validation against LOCA experiments

Andreas Pautz, Alessandro Scolaro, Carlo Fiorina, Edoardo Luciano Brunetto

The mechanical analysis of nuclear fuel behavior under base-irradiation conditions has traditionally been performed adopting the small-strain approximation. However, many cases of interest for fuel behavior involve the occurrence of large rod deformations ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA2023

Towards coupling conventional with high-fidelity fuel behavior analysis tools

Andreas Pautz, Alessandro Scolaro, Carlo Fiorina, Edoardo Luciano Brunetto

Multi-dimensional fuel performance codes have the potential to enhance the understanding of complex phenomena affecting fuel integrity, but their application is often limited by the high computational cost. Recognizing that many multi-dimensional aspects s ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2022

Investigation and Validation of Unstructured Mesh Methodologies for Modeling Experimental Reactors

Andreas Pautz, Mathieu Hursin, Carlo Fiorina, Tom Mager

This paper summarizes a methodology developed at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne for the neutronic modeling of the CROCUS experimental reactor and proposes solutions to the challenges one may face while modeling a research reactor with a complex g ...

MDPI2022

Implementation of a multidimensional diffusion-based neutronics solver in OFFBEAT

Alessandro Scolaro, Carlo Fiorina, Edoardo Luciano Brunetto

The OpenFOAM Fuel BEhavior Analysis Tool OFFBEAT is a multi-dimensional fuel performance code under development at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), in Switzerland. The latest developments are orient ...

American Nuclear Society2022

Bayesian Data Assimilation for Fuel Performance based on OFFBEAT

Andreas Pautz, Alessandro Scolaro, Mathieu Hursin, Carlo Fiorina

The EPFL and the PSI have been developing in recent years a new fuel performance tool named OFFBEAT. The tool is based on the OpenFOAM finite-volume library and allows for 1.5-D, 2-D and 3-D fuel performance analyses, both for base irradiation and for tran ...

American Nuclear Society2022

Development of a High Fidelity Model of the CROCUS Experimental Reactor

Andreas Pautz, Carlo Fiorina, Tom Mager

Measurements of scalar flux distributions with fine spatial and energy resolutions are needed to remedy one of the validation shortcomings of the novel neutronics full core solvers, such as MPACT and nTRACER. While a very detailed resolution of the flux ca ...

American Nuclear Society2022

GeN-ROM-An OpenFOAM(R)-based multiphysics reduced-order modeling framework for the analysis of Molten Salt Reactors

Carlo Fiorina

This work presents a projection-based multiphysics Model Order Reduction (MOR) framework for the analysis of nuclear systems and its application to parametric simulations of Molten Salt Reactors (MSR). The framework, named GeN-ROM, is developed using OpenF ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2022

Development of a point-kinetics model in OpenFOAM, integration in GeN-Foam, and validation against FFTF experimental data

Andreas Pautz, Stefan Radman, Carlo Fiorina

Following the growing interest that we observe in the use of OpenFOAM for nuclear reactor analysis, the current work presents a point-kinetics model and associated open-source code that can easily be inte-grated in existing thermal-hydraulic solvers to str ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2022

On the development of multi-physics tools for nuclear reactor analysis based on OpenFOAM (R): state of the art, lessons learned and perspectives

Carlo Fiorina

In the last two decades, the use of OpenFOAM as a multi-physics library for nuclear applications has grown from a sporadic use for exploratory studies to a widespread application for the analysis of innovative reactor concepts and highly complex problems. ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA2022

Development of a semi-implicit contact methodology for finite volume stress solvers

Andreas Pautz, Alessandro Scolaro, Carlo Fiorina

The past decades have seen numerous efforts to apply the finite volume methodology to solid mechanics problems. However, only limited work has been done by the finite volume community toward the simulation of mechanical contact. In this article, we present ...

Wiley2022

Development in OFFBEAT of a dynamic-mesh incremental stress-strain solver and validation against the IFA 650.2 ballooning experiment

Andreas Pautz, Alessandro Scolaro, Carlo Fiorina, Edoardo Luciano Brunetto

OFFBEAT is a 1D, 2D and 3D fuel behavior code under development at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI). In this paper, an incremental stress-strain solver with dynamic mesh update is presented and preli ...

American Nuclear Society2022

Analysis of the first COLIBRI fuel rods oscillation campaign in the CROCUS reactor for the European project CORTEX

Daniel Godat, Pavel Frajtag, Andreas Pautz, Adolfo Rais, Oskari Ville Pakari, Vincent Pierre Lamirand, Mathieu Hursin, Carlo Fiorina, Axel Guy Marie Laureau

The Horizon2020 European project CORTEX aims at developing an innovative core monitoring technique that allows detecting anomalies in nuclear reactors, such as excessive vibrations of core internals, flow blockage, or coolant inlet perturbations. The techn ...

2021

Investigation on the effect of eccentricity for fuel disc irradiation tests

Andreas Pautz, Alessandro Scolaro, Carlo Fiorina

A varying degree of eccentricity always exists in the initial configuration of a nuclear fuel rod. Its impact on traditional LWR fuel is limited as the radial gap closes relatively early during irradiation. However, the effect of misalignment is expected t ...

2021

CORE SIM+ simulations of COLIBRI fuel rods oscillation experiments and comparison with measurements

Daniel Godat, Paolo Vinai, Pavel Frajtag, Andreas Pautz, Adolfo Rais, Oskari Ville Pakari, Vincent Pierre Lamirand, Mathieu Hursin, Carlo Fiorina, Axel Guy Marie Laureau

At EPFL, the CROCUS reactor has been used to carry out experiments with vibrating fuel rods. The paper presents a first attempt to employ the measured data to validate CORE SIM+, a neutron noise solver developed at Chalmers University of Technology. For th ...

2021

Data-Driven Reduced-Order Modeling of Convective Heat Transfer in Porous Media

Carlo Fiorina

This work presents a data-driven Reduced-Order Model (ROM) for parametric convective heat transfer problems in porous media. The intrusive Proper Orthogonal Decomposition aided Reduced-Basis (POD-RB) technique is employed to reduce the porous medium formul ...

MDPI2021

Development of a novel two-phase flow solver for nuclear reactor analysis: Validation against sodium boiling experiments

Andreas Pautz, Stefan Radman, Carlo Fiorina

Recent numerical advancements at the Laboratory for Reactor Physics and Systems Behaviour (LRS) have led to the development of a novel two-phase porous medium-based thermal-hydraulic simulation tool, integrated in the broader multi-physics framework of the ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA2021