FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS FOR LAMINAR FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER IN FINITE ROD BUNDLES

This investigation deals with the application of finite element method to solve the thermohydraulic problem of laminar fully developed flow in the interior and wall sub-channels of finite fuel rod bundles. A variational principle has been used for the solution of the momentum and energy equations. Wall shear stress and temperature distributions, ?Re and Nusselt numbers are obtained for the sub-channels of different configurations. The results are compared with solutions generated by collocation and finite difference methods.