CFD Analysis of Cable-In-Conduit Conductors (CICC) for Fusion Grade Magnets

In the present work, dual channel Cable-in-Conduit Conductor (CICC) is considered for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis to understand the complex behavior of flow. A two dimensional (2D) axisymmetric computational model mimicking the CICC is generated and meshed in GAMBIT 2.0. The meshed model is exported to FLUENT 6.3, a commercial CFD code, for further analysis. Annular bundle channel of CICC is assumed to be porous medium with porosity of 0.37 and the central channel is assumed as clear region. The effects of variations in mass flow rate (6 g/s to 10 g/s) of Supercritical helium (SHe), which is used as coolant, through CICC on the pressure gradients and velocity gradients are studied. Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) model is considered for the analysis with standard k-epsilon (kappa - epsilon) turbulence, which is relevant to the separated flow models. Axial and Radial pressure gradients are calculated along the CICC axis and along the centre line of bundle channel. Friction factor is calculated using the shear stresses obtained from CFD analysis.