Nuclear Engineering and Design 320 (2017) 44–56

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Nuclear Engineering and Design

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/nucengdes

Numerical modeling of flow induced vibration of nuclear fuel rods

Dante De Santis, Afaque Shams ⇑
Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group (NRG), Westerduinweg 3, 1755 LE Petten, The Netherlands

h i g h l i g h t s

Numerical simulations of flow induced vibration of nuclear fuel rods in axial turbulent flows.

Fluid-structure interaction simulations of tightly coupled problems.

Operational analysis to extract the modal parameters of the fluid-structure system from the numerical simulations.

Single and double fuel rods in turbulent water flow.

Cross validation between numerical results and the experimental data.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Flow induced vibration (FIV) plays an important role in many industrial applications, including nuclear
Received 3 January 2017 energy. In a nuclear power plant, several components could experience FIV. However, among them, fuel
Received in revised form 3 May 2017 rods are critical because of the combined effects of very slender shapes of the rods and hydrodynamic
Accepted 12 May 2017
loads induced by the turbulent flow of the surrounding coolant fluid. In this article, a numerical study
Available online 25 May 2017
of a nuclear fuel rod system is performed using a combined computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and com-
putational structural mechanic (CSM) approach. The selected rod system is representative of an experi-
mental set-up consisting of a single and multiple fuel rods exhibiting strongly coupled non-linear
behaviors. As a first step, an operational procedure is proposed to construct a numerical model of the
rod to be used in the Fluid-structure interaction (FSI) simulations. The material properties of the model
are tuned to match the experimental natural frequencies measured in free air. Despite the structural
complexities present in the experiments, the natural frequencies of the rod are correctly reproduced,
which is an essential step for the subsequent FIV analysis. Subsequently, the FSI computations are per-
formed and the numerical results are processed to extract the modal parameters of the system in axial
turbulent flow regime. Both, one and two rod systems are extensively studied for different flow velocities.
The obtained results agree with the measurements and the theory.
Ó 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction densities of the coolant fluids. In order to prevent possible damages

Cylindrical structures subjected to external fluid flows are com-
mon in many processes related to energy generation and conver-
sion. One important phenomenon limiting the development and
reliability of these applications is related to flow-induced vibration
(FIV) which arises from the fluid-structure coupling (Kaneko et al.,
2014). Incidents due to flow-induced vibration or noise generation
leading to structural failure have occurred in the past, hence, it is
critically important to take into account the flow-induced mechan-
ical vibration during the design process. In nuclear energy applica-
tions, in particular, the quest for more energy production has
resulted in more powerful nuclear reactors, with larger and slender
components, more intense thermal energies, higher velocities and
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: desantis@nrg.eu (D. De Santis), shams@nrg.eu (A. Shams).
and safety issues in nuclear reactors, it is important to ensure that
the (unavoidable) flow-induced mechanical vibration does not
compromise the structural integrity of any critical component.
Fluid-elastic vibration can occur in cross-flow as well as axial
flow conditions (Païdoussis, 1983). Compared to the cross-flow
case, the level of vibration in axial flow is generally small, never-
theless, the phenomenon cannot be ignored in the design process.
Even if vibrations are not destructive per se, they can still pose a
safety issue due to the fact that FIV can cause fatigue damages in
the fuel rods or induce grid-to-rod fretting wear-induced failure
(Kim, 2009; Blau, 2014). Fuel rods are usually closely packed
together and inter-cylinder gaps can also be very tight, conse-
quently, FIV in axial flows, although very small, can cause inter-
cylinder impacts which can potentially result in mechanical
failures.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nucengdes.2017.05.013
0029-5493/Ó 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 D. De Santis, A. Shams / Nuclear Engineering and Design 320 (2017) 44–56 45

The small-amplitude vibrations of cylinders in axial flow are conditions and different sets of constraints. In Section 4, the system
usually caused by the random pressure fluctuation present in the with two fuel rods is simulated using the approach developed in
flow field surrounding the structures. The forcing pressure field the previous section and the inter-cylinder hydrodynamic coupling
has both near and far field components. The near field component effects are investigated. Finally, Section 5 concludes this paper.
of the pressure fluctuation is associated with the local fluctuation
of the pressure induced by turbulent boundary layers, while the
2. Numerical simulation of fluid-structure interaction problems
far field component is induced by the propagating disturbances
in the form of acoustic waves induced, for example, by upstream
Numerical simulations of coupled FSI problems require the
obstacles, pipe bends or pump pulsation (Païdoussis, 1998). The
simultaneous solution of the fluid and structural problems with
cylinders, forced by the external flow, vibrate predominately in
proper transmission conditions between the two domains. At the
their first modes but the damping ratio and the natural frequencies
fluid-solid interface, the flow induced forces represent the external
of system are different from those in the free air configuration due
loads for the structural problem, at the same time, the displace-
to the presence of the surrounding fluid flow. In addition, when
ment and the velocity of the surface of the structural material rep-
multiple rods are present, the fluid also introduces a hydrodynamic
resent the boundary conditions for the fluid problem. If body fitted
coupling between the neighboring cylinders.
fluid solvers are used, the CFD grid remains conforming to the solid
Several theoretical models for the FIV of slender bodies in axial
boundary, hence, mesh deformation algorithms must be adopted
flow have been proposed in the past; a description of these models
to smoothly propagate the deformation of the boundary surface
is beyond the scope of this paper but can be found in several
into the interior of the fluid mesh. This framework for FSI problems
review papers (Païdoussis, 1981; Blevins, 1979; Wang and Ni,
is generally referred to as three-field formulation (Lesoinne et al.,
2009). Some of these models are quite accurate in predicting the
1993).
natural frequencies and the vibration amplitudes of the structure;
In this work, the fluid flow is assumed to be governed by the
however, they usually do not perform well in predicting viscous
incompressible Navier-Stokes equations which are solved on
damping, turbulence-induced vibration and flutter type instabili-
deforming grids using the arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) for-
ties due to the fact that viscous effects are mainly taken into
mulation (Donea et al., 1982). The structure is assumed to be a lin-
account through empirical functions. Although, in some situations,
ear elastic solid governed by the Newton’s second law. In addition,
these theoretical models represent a fast and decently accurate
kinematic compatibility and dynamic equilibrium conditions are
approach to predict FIV, they are no longer valid in the study of
enforced at the fluid-solid interface.
highly non-linear problems or complex assembly configurations.
Due to the coupling between the solid and fluid domains, the
The non-linearities can be related not only to the fluid flow field
governing equations for the solid and the fluid cannot be solved
but also to the structural behavior of the rods like inter-cylinder
independently from each other. Broadly speaking, FSI problems
contacts, non-ideal constraints. In this prospective, Computational
can be solved with two approaches: monolithic (Hron and Turek,
Fluid Dynamic (CFD) and Computational Structural Mechanics
2006) and partitioned (Degroote, 2013). The latter approach is used
(CSM) represent an alternative to the classical theoretical models,
here because it has several advantages which include reduced
and have the potential to overcome the limitations common to
computational complexity, software modularity and exploitation
many models.
of of-the-shelf software components. In particular, the adopted
The work of Liu et al. (2012a,b, 2013) consider Fluid-Structure
coupling method used in this work is based on the use of Gauss-
Interaction (FSI) problems for axial flow-induced vibration with
Seidel iterations between the fluid and the structural solvers with
simplified fuel assemblies in which structural rods are approxi-
Aitkens under-relaxation factor (Küttler and Wall, 2008). At each
mated with one-dimensional Euler-Bernoulli beam models and
time step, the fluid and the structure are solved iteratively until
the fluid flow is considered either laminar or turbulent. In the work
convergence is reached.
of De Ridder et al. (2013, 2015) the dynamics and the stability of a
The FSI simulations are performed by using the commercial
single fuel rod are studied by using three-dimensional solid ele-
software STAR-CCM+ (version 10:6) STAR-CCM+ v.10.06 User’s
ments and URANS equations for the structural and the turbulent
Guide, 2015 in which the governing equations of fluid are solved
flow field, respectively. A large-eddy model was used in other
by the means of a finite volume approach, whereas the governing
works (Christon et al., 2016; Elmahdi et al., 2011) to simulate fuel
equation of the structure are solved with a finite element method.
rod vibration and grid-to-rod fretting in pressurized water reac-
tors, however, the flow induced forces were computed first by con-
sidering the structure as rigid and then, in a subsequent step, the 3. Analysis of a single fuel rod in axial flow
structural problem was solved by applying the forces extracted
from the CFD simulations. 3.1. Construction of structural model
In this work, numerical simulations of axial FIV are performed
considering tightly coupled FSI problems for a system of one and In this section, the dynamic response of a single cylindrical rod
two fuel rods. The structural model of the fuel rod is selected from in axial water flow is studied. The model of the rod used in the pre-
the experimental work of De Pauw et al. (2015). An operational sent work is selected from the experimental work of De Pauw et al.
procedure is described to construct the numerical model and to (2015). The rod used in the experiments is a cylindrical tube man-
perform FSI simulations with the objective to identify modal ufactured from stainless steel, it is 1 400 mm long, with an external
parameters like natural frequencies and modal damping ratio. In diameter of 6:55 mm and a wall thickness of 0:51 mm, see Fig. 1.
addition, the effect of different flow regimes on the vibration of These dimensions were chosen to be as close as possible to those
the rod is also studied. of the actual fuel rods of the MYRRHA assembly (Baeten et al.,
The remaining of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, 2014). To take into account the internal structure of the fuel pin,
the numerical approach for FSI problems is briefly recalled. In Sec- the cylindrical tube is filled with pieces of Lead-Bismuth supported
tion 3, the methodology used in this work is illustrated for the case by hollow PVC spacers which are kept in position by springs. The
of a single cylinder: the structural model is selected and its natural two extremities of the hollow cylinder are closed with dedicated
frequencies are used to validate the numerical model against the tips which are also used to connect the structure to its support.
experimental one; fully coupled FSI simulations are performed In De Pauw et al. (2013), the natural frequencies of the rod in free
and the dynamics of the rod are studied for different flow air have been determined experimentally for the case in which the
46 D. De Santis, A. Shams / Nuclear Engineering and Design 320 (2017) 44–56
Fig. 1. Sketch of the experimental model of the fuel rod (De Pauw et al., 2015).
cylindrical rod is clamped at both ends to a rigid supporting struc-
ture. The frequency of the first and second mode has been esti-
mated in the range 8.45–8.52 Hz, while the second mode has a
frequency in the range 28.0–29.42 Hz.
In order to use a model of the cylindrical rod that is able to
reproduce as close as possible the dynamics of the one used in
the experiments, the experimental natural frequencies are used
as target quantities to create a numerical structural model. This
step is necessary due to the fact that modeling the complex inter-
nal structure of the cylindrical rod used in the experiments is an
extremely complicated task. In addition, not enough information
regarding the structural and material characteristics of the internal
components are available.
The geometry of the cylindrical rod used in the numerical sim-
ulations is depicted in Fig. 2. It consists of two components, i.e., an
annular pipe that reproduces the external structure of the fuel rod
and a cylinder that reproduce its internal structure. Consistently
with the model used in the experiments, the length of the external
pipe is 1 400 mm, the external diameter is 6:55 mm, the wall thick-
ness is 0:51 mm and it is assumed to be made of stainless steel. The
internal cylinder is 720 mm long and its material properties are
tuned in such a way that the natural frequencies of the numerical
model are as close as possible to that determined experimentally.
The numerical mesh of the cylindrical rod is conformal at the inter-
face between the pipe and the cylinder and the nodal displace-
ments here are continuous.
The eigen-frequencies of the structural model are computed
numerically by the means of the open-source finite element solver
Code_Aster (Code_Aster v.13 User’s Guide, 2016). The numerical
grid used to compute the structural modes is shown in Fig. 3 and
Fig. 2. Sketch (not to scale) of the structural numerical model of the fuel rod.
Fig. 3. Two different views of the mesh of the structural model used to compute the eigen-frequencies of the cylindrical rod.
consists of 23 400 hexahedral elements. Quadratic 3D solid ele-
ments are used to model the continuum mechanics and the Lanc-
zos algorithm (Saad, 2011) is used to compute the structural
modes. In the first configuration considered here, the two extrem-
ities of the rod are considered to be clamped; this condition is
imposed by constraining all the displacements of the grid nodes
on the faces at the ends of the pipe.
Several numerical experiments have been performed to select
the proper combination of the parameters for which the natural
frequencies of the numerical model match those of the experimen-
tal rod. The final set of the parameters of pipe and the internal
cylinder are reported in Table 1. The first three eigen-frequencies
obtained with these values are reported in Table 2 along with
the experimental natural frequencies measured in De Pauw et al.
(2013). It can be noted that the eigen-frequencies of the numerical
structural model agree very well with those of the actual structural
model determined experimentally. For sake of completeness, the
natural frequencies computed on grids with different numbers of
degrees of freedom (DoF) are reported in Table 3. It can be
observed that the numerical grid used to validate the structural
model is sufficient to compute properly the natural frequencies
when quadratic elements are used, while with linear elements
the natural frequencies are always overestimated.
3.2. Cross-validation of the structural model
In the previous section, the numerical model of the rod has been
validated against the experimental one using the natural frequen-
cies computed with the finite element solver Code_Aster. Since FSI
simulations will be performed with the STAR-CCM+ solver, a
cross-validation between the structural solvers implemented in
Code_Aster and STAR-CCM+ is performed here. To this purpose, a
simple static linear problem is solved using the same structural
model of the rod as well as the same numerical grid. The rod is
clamped at both extremities and an uniform load of 1 000 N/m3
in the vertical direction is applied on the internal cylinder. The ver-
tical displacement of the axis of the rod computed with Code_Aster
and STAR-CCM+, using linear and quadratic elements, is plotted in
Fig. 4-(a). The solutions computed with the two codes using quad-
 D. De Santis, A. Shams / Nuclear Engineering and Design 320 (2017) 44–56 47

Table 1 consequently, also in the numerical simulation a fully turbulent

Material properties of the two components of the fuel rod used in the numerical inflow is considered. To numerically solve the unsteady turbulent
simulation.
flow, the URANS methodology with k-x SST (Menter, 1994) turbu-
Component Density [kg/m3] Young’s modulus [Pa] Poisson’s ratio [-] lence model is adopted. The choice of this turbulence model is also
Pipe 8 000 2  1011 0:3 supported by a previous work on problems of the same category
Cylinder 21 800 2  104 0:3 (ter Hofstede et al., 2015, 2017); indeed it was showed that the
k-x SST model (which is based on the Boussinesq approximation
of isotropic turbulence) and the Reynolds Stress Model (which is
based on the use of transport equations for the Reynolds stress)
Table 2
Numerical and experimental (De Pauw et al., 2013) natural frequencies of the fuel rod. produce similar results for turbulent induced vibrations. Finally,
for all the simulations, the turbulent intensity is taken as TI ¼ 5%
f 1 [Hz] f 2 [Hz] f 3 [Hz]
and the turbulent length scale is taken as ‘t ¼ 2 mm.
Numerical 8:50 28:0 57:24 The CFD grid consists of 154 000 hexahedral elements with 40
Experimental 8.42–8.52 28.0–29.42 –
and 140uniform divisions in the circumferential and axial direc-
tions, respectively. The discretization in the radial direction is such
that, for all the considered simulations, the first point of the grid off
Table 3 the wall is located in the viscous sub-layer region; typically, in
Natural frequencies computed numerically on different grids, with linear and
terms of wall units, 1 6 yþ1 < 5. An additional numerical simulation
quadratic hexahedral elements.
(not reported here) of the fluid flow on a finer grid obtained by
Linear Quadratic doubling the number of points in all the directions confirmed that,
Number of elements f 1 [Hz] f 2 [Hz] f 1 [Hz] f 2 [Hz] for the pressure and viscous forces, the difference between results
4 180 22.8043 68.1987 8.46571 27.9271 on the basic and finer grid is less than 1%, furthermore a sensitivity
23 440 15.9650 50.9185 8.50363 28.0343 study of the STAR-CCM+ solver for FSI problems has been per-
46 880 10.8706 35.5463 8.50864 28.0596 formed in a previous work (ter Hofstede et al., 2015).
The continuity, momentum and turbulence equations are semi-
discretized with a second-order upwind segregated scheme and
ratic elements agree well with each other while, with linear ele- are integrated in time with a second-order implicit scheme. The
ments, the displacement computed with Code_Aster is not as accu- governing equations of the structure are semi-discretized with a
rate as that computed with STAR-CCM+. For sake of completeness, second-order linear elastic finite element method and integrated
in Fig. 4-(b) the displacement computed with STAR-CCM+ on a in time with a second-order Newmark method. The two-way cou-
coarser grid is reported. The grid is obtained by halving the number pling implemented in STAR-CCM+ (STAR-CCM+ v.10.06 User’s
of elements of the previous grid in all the directions. Note that the Guide, 2015) is used to perform the FSI simulations.
results obtained with the coarser grid are accurate enough for
numerical purpose and for this reason this grid will be used to per- 3.4. Impulse response of the fluid-structure system
form FSI simulations with STAR-CCM+.
The response of the cylindrical rod to an impulsive force is con-
sidered and the dependence of the modal characteristics of the
3.3. Coupled fluid-structure interaction simulations
structure on the inflow fluid velocity is investigated. The effect of
different types of constraints of the rod on the dynamics of the
The numerical fluid domain is an annular pipe with length
structure are studied as well.
L ¼ 1 400 mm and hydraulic diameter Dh ¼ 42:6 mm. The axis of
In all the FSI simulations, the fluid solution is initialized with a
the domain is aligned with the z-axis of the coordinate reference
steady state computation in which the structure is initially kept
system and the vertical direction is along the y-axis, see Fig. 5.
fixed. After a steady state solution is reached, a coupled unsteady
The dimensions of the fluid domain are identical to those of the
FSI simulation is performed in which the cylindrical rod is per-
test section of the experimental set-up described in De Pauw
turbed with an impulsive vertical force applied at the center of
et al. (2015,). The inlet velocity and the outlet pressure are imposed
the rod. The impulse is approximate by the following smooth
at the inflow and outflow vertical faces, respectively. The outer sur-
function
face of the domain is considered to be a rigid, no-slip wall; the
(
inner surface is in contact with the solid material interface and is
a  et2 =2r2 ; if 0 6 t 6 2:5  103 ;
assumed to be a deforming, no-slip wall. The fluid mesh is allowed dF ¼
to deform in order to accommodate the displacement of the grid 0; otherwise;
nodes on the moving wall.
with a ¼ 0:22 and r ¼ 0:0007. A time step Dt ¼ 104 s has been
The same structural model described in the previous section is
used in all the simulations.
also used here for the fuel rod. Different boundary conditions will
The radial displacement history of cylindrical rod can be pro-
be applied at the extremities of the rod; these include clamped
cessed to obtain the modal characteristics of the structural model.
boundary condition obtained by constraining the nodal displace-
To this purpose, the radial displacement of the center-line at the
ment in all the directions and pinned boundary condition obtained
axial location z is approximated as follows
by constraining the nodal displacements in the x- and y-direction
only. Fluid-structure transmission conditions are applied at the X
Nm

interface between the fluid and solid domain. dðtÞz  ai evi t sinðxi t þ /i Þ;
Similar to the experimental set-up, water is considered as work- i¼1

ing fluid. The fluid density and dynamic viscosity are
qw ¼ 1 000 kg  m3 and lw ¼ 9:23  104 Pas, respectively. The
Reynolds number based on Dh and an inflow fluid velocity
v in ¼ 5:25 m  s1 is Re ¼ 2:4  105 . The fluid flow in the experimen-
tal set-up is fully turbulent at the inlet of the test section and,
with N m the number of modes considered. The parameters ai ; vi ; xi
and /i are obtained via a non-linear least squares fitting of the
approximated displacement to the computed one. Finally, the natu-
ral frequency (f i ) and modal damping ratio (ni ) are computed from
the following relations
48 D. De Santis, A. Shams / Nuclear Engineering and Design 320 (2017) 44–56
Fig. 4. Vertical displacement of the axis of the rod due to the application of a vertical uniform load. Left: results obtained with Code_Aster and STAR-CCM+ using linear and
quadratic elements. Right: results obtained with STAR-CCM+ on two grids with different resolutions and using linear and quadratic elements.
Fig. 5. Computational fluid and solid domains used for the FSI simulation of a single
fluid rod.
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
vi ¼ 2pni f i and xi ¼ 2p 1  n2i f i :
This procedure is applied to the displacement histories of five
equidistant points along the axial direction and the identified
modal parameters have been found to be almost identical (differ-
ences less that 0:1%); still, for consistency, an average of the values
at the different z locations is used to identify the global parameters
of the structure.
The case in which both ends of the cylindrical rod are clamped
is analyzed first. For the inflow fluid velocity v ¼ 5:25 m  s1 , the
radial displacement history of the rod at z ¼ 770 mm is reported
for the time window ½0; 4 s1 in Fig. 6, where the displacement
approximated with one and two modes is also reported. Note that,
because no structural damping has been considered, the vibrations
of the rod are damped out only by the dissipative action of skin fric-
tion forces produced by the surrounding fluid flow. The correspond-
ing signal in the frequency domain is reported in Fig. 7; the peaks of
the signal as well as the phase change in correspondence of the nat-
ural frequencies of the system are clearly evident. It is worth notic-
ing that the structure vibrates mainly with the first two modes and,
as shown later, the natural frequencies of the structure in the fluid
flow are lower than those computed for the isolated structure in
vacuo due to the added mass effect.
Due to the fact that the fluid flow is the main mechanism here
affecting the modal characteristics of the cylindrical rod, the effect
1 are higher than those identified in the experimental work of De
All the simulations are actually run for a time length of 10 s, but for sake of
visualization only the time history up to 4 s is reported in the Fig. 6.
of the flow regime on the dynamics of the structure is investigated.
In this respect, FSI simulations with inflow fluid velocities in the
range 0–6.75 m  s1 are performed. The representation in the fre-
quency domain of the radial displacement of the point of the rod
at z ¼ 770 mm is reported in Fig. 8 for different inflow fluid veloc-
ities. The variation of the non-dimensional natural frequencies and
modal damping ratios as function of the non dimensional inflow
fluid velocity are reported in Fig. 9; the frequencies are made
non-dimensional with the natural frequency in vacuo of the corre-
sponding mode and the non-dimensional velocity is defined as
v ¼ Dfv0 , where f 0 is the fundamental natural frequency in quiescent
fluid and D is the external diameter of the rod.
As expected, the natural frequencies of the rod surrounded by
the fluid are lower than the frequencies in vacuo due to the added
mass effect. It can be noted that, starting from a quiescent fluid, the
fundamental natural frequency of the system slightly decreases
with the inflow fluid velocity and then it increases for velocities
higher that v ¼ 4:5 m  s1 (v  ¼ 137:4); the natural frequency of
the second mode monotonously decreases with the inflow fluid
velocity. On the other hand, the modal damping ratio increases
with the inflow fluid velocity for first and second modes and, as
expected, the damping ratio of the first mode is higher than that
of the second mode. Note the very low value of the damping ratio
of the system in case of quiescent fluid, which means that the
vibration amplitudes of the rod in this case are damped very
slowly.
In Fig. 10, the reconstructed modes shapes of the cylindrical rod
for different inflow fluid velocities are reported together with those
computed in vacuo. Each mode shape is normalized such that its
maximum amplitude is unitary. The shape of the reconstructed
modes is similar to that computed for the isolated structural model
in vacuo, also note that the mode shapes are not symmetric around
the middle point of the axis due to the fact that the internal cylin-
der of the rod model is not located symmetrically along the axis.
The mode shapes in vacuo and in quiescent fluid are very similar,
whereas, for increasing fluid velocities the mode shapes are
dragged downstream with the fluid flow. The same effect has been
also observed, for the case of clamped-pinned uniform beam in
axial flow, in previous analytic (de Langre et al., 2007) and CFD
works (De Ridder et al., 2015).
As it will be discussed later in more detail, the natural fre-
quencies of the cylindrical rod in axial flow computed previously
Pauw et al. (2015) despite the fact that the numerical and
 D. De Santis, A. Shams / Nuclear Engineering and Design 320 (2017) 44–56 49

Fig. 6. Top: displacement time history of the rod at z ¼ 770 mm for the inflow fluid velocity v ¼ 5:25 m  s1 , the approximated signal using the first two modes is also
reported. Bottom: closeup view for 0 6 t 6 0:5 s.

Fig. 7. Frequency representation of the displacement of the rod at z ¼ 770 mm in the case of inflow fluid velocity v ¼ 5:25 m  s1 .

experimental natural frequencies of the isolated structure are
almost identical. The reason for this discrepancy is mainly due
to the modified type of constraints applied to the structural
model to conduct the experiments in the water tunnel. During
the experimental identification of the modal parameters in free
air, the rod was clamped at both ends and this type of constraint
has been easily translated in the numerical model by fixing to
zero the displacement of the nodes at the extremities of the
rod. In experiments with axial flow, the tips of the rod are fixed
with a slit and key mechanism; this type of constraint does not
represent a perfect clamping mechanism and limited motion of
the extremity of the pin was observed in the experimental
measures.
In order to study the effect of the boundary conditions on the
dynamics of the fuel rod, the FSI simulations are performed using
a different set of constraints. In particular, here the situation in
which the upstream extremity of the fuel rod is pinned and the
downstream extremity is clamped is considered. With this config-
uration, the first two natural frequencies of the isolated structural
model are f 1 ¼ 5:53 Hz and f 2 ¼ 22:0 Hz. These frequencies are
closer to those reported in De Pauw et al. (2015) for the case of
the fuel rod in axial flow, hence, also the numerical natural fre-
quencies of the fluid-structure system are expected to be closer
to the experimental ones. However, without a detail description
of the type of the pin constraints and without a knowledge of nat-
ural frequencies in free air with the actual constraints used to
50 D. De Santis, A. Shams / Nuclear Engineering and Design 320 (2017) 44–56

Fig. 8. Frequency representation of the displacement of the rod at z ¼ 770 mm for different inflow fluid velocities.

Fig. 9. Natural frequencies (a) and damping ratios (b) of the rod for the first two modes as function of the inflow fluid velocity (clamped-clamped configuration).

study FIV it will not be possible to model exactly the same config-
uration used in the experiments. It is also worth noticing that the
set of boundary conditions pinned-clamped adopted in this work is
reverted with respect to the classical configuration used in the
study of FIV of beams in which the downstream surface of the
rod is pinned and the upstream one is clamped. Indeed, using the
clamped-pinned boundary conditions the natural frequencies of
the structure in vacuo are f 1 ¼ 6:58 Hz and f 2 ¼ 24:62 Hz, which
are not as close to the experimental frequencies as the ones
obtained with the configuration pinned-clamped. It is also worth
remembering that the rod structure is not symmetric around the
middle plane because the internal filling material is shifted
towards the inflow boundary, consequently the two sets of bound-
ary conditions result in different natural frequencies also for the
isolated structural model.
In Fig. 11, for the configuration pinned-clamped, the variation of
the non-dimensional natural frequencies and modal damping
ratios as function of the non-dimensional inflow fluid velocity is
reported. First of all, it can be noted that, as anticipated, the natural
frequencies of the structure for the pinned-clamped configuration
are lower that the frequencies for the clamped-clamped
configuration. In addition, the values of the damping ratio are
higher. Similarly to the clamped-clamped configuration, the funda-
mental frequency of the structure increases with the inflow fluid
velocity while the frequency of the second mode decreases. At
the same time, the modal damping ratio increases with the inflow
fluid velocity, but for velocities higher than 6 m  s1 (v
 ¼ 117:4)
the damping ratio of the fundamental mode starts to decrease,
indicating that for higher velocities a fluid elastic instability can
be encountered. The same trend seems also to be predicted by
the experimental observations although, as shown later, the values
of damping ratio observed in the experiments are higher than
those computed numerically. Finally, in Fig. 12, the identified mode
shapes for different inflow fluid velocities are reported together
with the modes of the isolated structure in vacuo in the case of
pinned-clamped configuration. The reconstructed mode shapes
are in accordance with the imposed set of constraints and their
variation with inflow fluid velocity is similar to that observed for
the clamped-clamped configuration.
The numerical and experimental values of the natural fre-
quency and damping ratio as function of the inflow fluid velocity
are illustrated in Fig. 13 and reported in Table 4. Concerning the
natural frequency of the cylindrical rod, with the configuration
clamped-clamped, the numerical values are much higher than
 D. De Santis, A. Shams / Nuclear Engineering and Design 320 (2017) 44–56 51

Fig. 10. Reconstructed shape of the first two modes of the rod for different inflow fluid velocities and in vacuo as well (clamped-clamped configuration).

Fig. 11. Natural frequencies (a) and damping ratios (b) of the rod for the first two modes as function of the inflow fluid velocity (pinned-clamped configuration).

those evaluated experimentally. Whereas, with the configuration
pinned-clamped, the values of the numerical frequencies are lower
than the experimental ones, although the discrepancy is reduced;
this consideration is true for both first and second modes. The dif-
ference between the numerical results and the experimental data
is most likely due to the modelization of the constraints in the
numerical simulations. As mention previously, the constraint
mechanism of the experimental fuel rod in axial flow allows for a
movement of the extremity, whereas, in the numerical simulations
the extremities are considered to be perfectly clamped or pinned.
From the obtained results, it seems that the constraint of the
experimental model has a degree of rigidity between that intro-
duced by the clamped and pinned boundary conditions. As the con-
figuration pinned-clamped allows for larger vibrations of the rod
than in the case clamped-clamped, the natural frequency of vibra-
tion gets smaller. At the same time it is important to mention that
the pinned constraint allows for axial displacement of the rod at
the extremity while the reduced mobility of the rod in the experi-
mental set up allows for a displacement in cross-sectional plane,
this difference in the type of allowed movement makes the fluid-
dynamic forces act according to different mechanisms, ultimately
resulting in different natural frequencies of vibration.
Concerning the modal damping ratio, the experimental values
are always larger than the numerical ones, especially for the first
mode. The explanation for this difference is two fold. In this work,
the URANS approach has been used to model the turbulent effects
because two way coupled FSI simulations based on the use of LES
(or DNS) approach are not feasible yet, especially for a large
domain like the one used here. However, in the URANS approach
turbulent structures are highly damped resulting in a reduced forc-
ing of the structure, and this in combination with small structural
vibration amplitudes leads to a smaller structural damping. The
52 D. De Santis, A. Shams / Nuclear Engineering and Design 320 (2017) 44–56

Fig. 12. Reconstructed shape of the first two modes of the rod for different inflow fluid velocities and in vacuo as well (pinned-clamped configuration).

Fig. 13. Experimental and numerical natural frequencies (a) and damping ratios (b) of the rod for the first two modes as function of the inflow fluid velocity.

Table 4
Experimental and numerical values of the natural frequencies and damping ratios of the rod as function of the fluid velocity.

Experimental Clamped-Clamped Pinned-Clamped

Velocity mode 1 mode 2 mode 1 mode 2 mode 1 mode 2

3:75 [m  s1 ] f [Hz] 5:61 21:80 7:831 25:588 5:080 20:023

n [%] 12:6 3:3 3:019 1:297 5:080 1:517

4:50 [m  s1 ] f [Hz] 5:68 21:85 8:827 25:578 5:107 20:005

n [%] 12:7 3:8 3:072 1:558 5:080 1:750

5:25 [m  s1 ] f [Hz] 5:68 21:87 7:858 25:559 5:144 19:992

n [%] 12:9 4:2 3:623 1:783 5:080 2:049

6:00 [m  s1 ] f [Hz] 5:78 22:12 7:922 25:524 5:213 19:944

n [%] 12:7 3:2 4; 156 2:042 5:080 2:309

6:75 [m  s1 ] f [Hz] 6:00 21:90 7:993 25:506 5:425 19:925

n [%] 12:2 4:9 4:894 2:295 5:080 2:387
 D. De Santis, A. Shams / Nuclear Engineering and Design 320 (2017) 44–56
Fig. 14. The four cross-sectional inter-cylinder patterns of vibration associated with
the first flexural modes of a system of two cylinders.
other source of discrepancy between the numerical and experi-
mental values of damping ratio comes from the structure itself.
In this work, a simplified model of the actual structural rod has
been built by tuning the mass parameters of the structure in order
to match the experimental natural frequencies of the structure in
free air. No information about the structural damping is provided
in the experimental work of De Pauw et al. (2013), hence, the
structural damping has been neglected in the numerical model. It
is worth noticing that, since the experimental model is filled with
pieces of Lead-Bismuth supported by hollow PVC spacers and kept
in position by springs, the structural damping of the internal struc-
ture is not negligible and the lack of its modelization can partially
explain the difference between the numerical and experimental
values of the damping ratio. It is also interesting to note how the
damping ratio of the pinned-clamped configuration is higher than
that observed in the clamped-clamped configuration, this is sup-
ported by the fact that the larger amplitudes of the pinned-
clamped configuration will be damped more intensively resulting
in higher damping ratio.
It is worth noticing that a direct comparison between the
numerical and experimental vibration amplitudes is not possible
due to the different forcing mechanisms of the rod: impulsive force
in the numerical approach and turbulent random forcing in the
experiments. Indeed, with the URANS approach it is important to
introduce an external forcing on the structure due to the fact that
the chaotic turbulent fluctuations are not modeled and the fluid
system alone is not able to force properly the structure.
4. Analysis of two fuel rods in axial flow
In this section, a configuration with two parallel cylindrical rods
in axial turbulent flow is analyzed. In vacuo, the dynamics of each
rod are independent from those of the other rods, but in fluid flow
coupling effects arise due to the hydrodynamic coupling produced
by the pressure field as well as the displaced mass of fluid. For this
reason, the vibration of each cylinder cannot be considered in
Fig. 15. Left: computational fluid and solid domains used to perform the FSI simulations with two fuel rods. Right: detail of the unstructured mesh on the lateral face of the
domain.
53
isolation, but the vibration of the whole cluster of cylinders must
be simulated.
A remarkably important consequence of the hydrodynamic
coupling is that for a cluster of N cylinders, 2N natural frequen-
cies for each mode are present rather than a single one, as it
would be in the case of a single cylinder in fluid flow or in the
case of uncoupled cylinders (i.e., in vacuo) (Païdoussis, 1979;
Païdoussis and Gagnon, 1984; Chung and Chen, 1977; Chen,
1975,). For instance, there will be 2N natural frequencies associ-
ated with the first vibration mode, 2N natural frequencies associ-
ated with the second vibration mode, and so on. Within each
group, the modes differ from one another for the cross-
sectional, inter-cylinder, pattern of motion. The 2N natural fre-
quencies associated with each mode are clustered around the
corresponding vibration mode of a single cylinder in similar fluid
flow (Païdoussis and Gagnon, 1984) and, as usual, the real part of
the eigen-value will be associated with the oscillation frequency
and the imaginary part with the damping ratio. For example, in
the case of two rods, Fig. 14 depicts the cross-sectional pattern
of the four modes of vibrations associated with the first flexural
mode of the rods: in each of the two perpendicular directions,
two vibration modes exist which correspond to the in-phase
and out-of-phase inter-cylinder modal patterns.
Although the case of the two-rod system is not representative of
a complete fuel assembly, it is still an important test case from a
numerical point of view in preparation for the numerical simula-
tions of systems with multiple rods. For this reason, a configuration
with two rods is considered here to include the cross-sectional
coupling between neighboring rods but, at the same time, to keep
limited the computational cost of the simulations.
Two identical, double clamped, cylindrical rods are considered;
the cylinders are symmetrically located around the center of the
fluid domain with an inter-center distance of 8:35 mm. The struc-
tural model of the rod is the same illustrated in the previous sec-
tion; similarly, the length and the external diameter of the fluid
domain are unchanged with respect to the simulations with a sin-
gle rod.
The fluid-solid computational domain is depicted in Fig. 15. In
the radial direction, an unstructured mesh has been generated;
layers of structured quadrilateral elements are used near the solid
walls to better resolve the boundary layer, while polygonal ele-
ments are adopted in the center of the fluid domain. The mesh is
then extruded along the axial direction using 140 uniform divi-
sions, for approximately 300 000 total grid nodes in the fluid
domain. In all the simulations, the first point of the grid off the wall
is located in the viscous sub-layer region; yþ þ
1 < 5, with y1 < 2 in
54 D. De Santis, A. Shams / Nuclear Engineering and Design 320 (2017) 44–56
Fig. 16. Displacement histories along the horizontal (top) and vertical (bottom)
directions for a system with two cylinders in axial flow at v in ¼ 5:25 m  s1 .
Fig. 17. PSD of the vibration in the horizontal (left) and vertical (right) directions
for the two rods system with different inflow fluid velocities.
the inter-space between the two cylinders. Boundary conditions
analogous to that used for the simulations with the single rod
are used in the fluid domain. The mesh for each of the two cylindri-
cal rods is the same used for the simulation of the single rod and
the two extremities are considered to be clamped.
Due to the presence of multiple natural frequencies for each
mode, the analysis of the modal parameters of the system is much
more complicated than in the case of a single rod. For each defor-
mation mode, the frequency peaks are very close to each other and
it can be difficult to identify each individual frequency; the same
issue was also observed in experimental works (Gagnon and
Païdoussis, 1994). The other level of complication comes from
the fact that, due to the inter-cylinder fluid flow, the strong vibra-
tions induced by the hydrodynamic coupling overcome any initial
disturbance introduced in the system. For this reason, here the
simulations are initialized by imposing an initial displacement of
one of the cylinders and computing an initial steady state fluid
solution without solving for the structural problem. After a steady
state is reached, this solution is used as the initial state for a full FSI
simulation. Here, using the notation of Fig. 14, the cylinder-B is
statically deformed by applying an uniform load along the axis
such that the displacement of the middle point along the axis is
40 lm both in the x- and y-directions.
In Fig. 16, the vertical and horizontal displacement histories at
the axial midpoint of the two cylinders are reported, for the inflow
fluid velocity v in ¼ 5:25 m  s1 . It can be observed that the
cylinder-B oscillates in both the x- and y-directions but, due to
the effect of the other cylinder, the vibrations in the horizontal
direction are much more intense. Because of the hydrodynamic
coupling, the displacement of the cylinder-B induces the
cylinder-A to vibrate in the x- and y-directions. Eventually, all
the vibrations are damped out by the viscosity of the surrounding
fluid flow. It can also be noted that the vibrations along the x-
direction are initially out-of-phase (i.e., the cylinders are pushed
away and toward each other) and approximately after 1:3 s the
oscillations are in-phase. The vibrations along the y-direction have
an initial phase shifting and, after a short transition, they get in-
phase.
In Fig. 17, the power spectral densities (PSD) of the rod displace-
ment at middle point along the axis of the cylinder-B are reported
as function of the inflow fluid velocity. The PSD of the numerical
results have qualitatively the same behavior of that observed in
other theoretical and experimental works (Païdoussis and
Gagnon, 1984, 1994,), although the flow conditions and the struc-
tural model of the rods are different. It can be observed that the
majority of the power lies in the first mode group, also, the two fre-
quency peaks corresponding to the two cross-sectional vibration
patterns of the first vibration mode can be observed. As mention
before, the peaks are close to each other and are located around
the main flexural vibration frequency of the isolated rod; neverthe-
less, they can be observed in the numerical results especially in the
PSD of the horizontal displacement. Similarly to previous works,
the broadening of the peaks with the increase of the fluid velocity
can be observed, as the intensity of the vibrations gets stronger,
and also the spreading of the frequency band with the fluid veloc-
ity is reproduced. It is worth noting that, due to the less intense
vibrations in y-direction, the corresponding PSD is lower that than
associated with the vibration on the x-direction and the distinction
between the frequency peaks is less clear, but nevertheless the
dynamics of the displacement are similar. It must be said, however,
that the signal in the frequency domain might be affected by trun-
cation errors of the response with a limited time duration and con-
sequently the broadening of the spectrum and the blurring of the
peaks might be exacerbated in the numerical simulations. Never-
theless, it is worth noticing that the basic mechanism could be
observed, at least from a qualitative point of view, in numerical
simulations based on URANS models.
In Fig. 18, the PSD of the systems with one and two rods at
inflow fluid velocity v in ¼ 5:25 m  s1 are compared. The PSD are
associated with the vibrations in the direction along which the dis-
placement is larger: y-direction for one rod and x-direction for the
two rods system. In both configurations, clamped-clamped bound-
ary conditions are considered. Because two different mechanisms
have been used to induce the vibrations in the two cases, the abso-
lute values of the PSD are not directly comparable due to the differ-
ent order of magnitude of the scales, hence, the PSD of the
vibrations has been normalized to a maximum unitary value. It
can be observed that the frequency band is larger in the case of
the two rods system. In the case of a single rod, the PSD is much
more focused around the natural frequency of vibration and this
frequency is located between the two frequency peaks of the two
rods system. According to the interpretation in Païdoussis (1981),
if the system of cylinders is viewed as a shaped band-pass filter,
as consequence of the hydrodynamic coupling the band-pass
 D. De Santis, A. Shams / Nuclear Engineering and Design 320 (2017) 44–56 55

it will be possible, in the immediate future, to apply the considered

approach to study the FIV in more complex configurations with
several flexible rods.

Acknowledgments

The work described in this paper has received funding from the
Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Euratom research and
training program 2014–2018 under grant agreement No. 662186
(MYRTE). The authors are grateful to Dr. B. De Pauw (Vrije Univer-
siteit Brussel) for providing information about the experimental
set-up and to CD-adapco for the assistance with STAR-CCM+.

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Fig. 18. PSD of the vibration of single and double rods systems at inflow fluid
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