Integration Platform Construction Of Hydraulic Model Design And Optimization For Nuclear Main Pump

Nuclear reactor coolant pump, also called nuclear main pump, known as the "heart" of nuclear power plant, belongs to class 1 nuclear safety equipment in the security classification of various nuclear facilities. To guarantee the heat in nuclear reactor core being taken away promptly, ensuring long-term stable operation of the nuclear main pump under harsh working conditions, more higher requirements has been put forward whether in manufacturing or design for nuclear main pump. At present, China has introduced the third generation of nuclear main pump, and it is absorbing and designs independently. But the critical flow components design and manufacturing technology is still monopolized by a few nuclear power, severely restricting vigorous development of China’s nuclear power industry. Therefore, deeply study on establishment of highly reliable and efficient nuclear main pump hydraulic model, has profound significance for further development of China’s nuclear power industry.Based on the consideration of structural safety and reliability, the volute structure of nuclear main pump was designed into a nearly spherical shape. Early research has shown that the spherical volute structure and the outlet pipe arrangement are one of the main causes leading to large hydraulic loss in the third generation of nuclear main pump. Different wrap angles and relative positions of guide vanes directly affect the guide vane matching with the volute. Too large warp angle increases the friction loss in vane passages, thereby reducing the pump hydraulic efficiency. Conversely, too small warp angle lowers the guide ability to control the flow and fluid flow stability, also not conducive to improve the pump efficiency. Therefore, based on previous studies, we used combinatorial optimization strategy combined with experimental design, approximate model and global optimization algorithms to optimize the warp angle and the outlet relative position of guide vanes, and ultimately find the optimum wrap angle and relative position, reducing flow losses and improving the efficiency of the nuclear main pump.Interaction effect between the impeller outlet and the guide vane inlet also influence the nuclear main pump hydraulic performance. On the basis of the optimization of interaction effect, we used multi-disciplinary optimization software-Isight to integrate the combinatorial optimization strategy. Program language python was selected to develop graphical user interface and make package for integrated optimization design platform set up with Isight. Platform of design and optimization of hydraulic model was initially built for nuclear main pumps. Development of the platform improves the rapidity and effectiveness of hydraulic design for nuclear main pumps, saving a lot of inevitable repetitive human labor in the optimization process of flow components, and providing a powerful tool for future use of such combinatorial optimization strategy. In the last part of this paper, the platform was used to optimize the impeller and the interaction between it and the guide vanes inlet, the hydraulic performance of the third generation of nuclear model main pump was further improved. The model pump was obtained by our research group in preliminary studies.