Publications by Carlo Fiorina | EPFL Graph Search

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

Carlo Fiorina, Alessandro Scolaro, 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, Yuhang Niu, Hao Qin

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

Carlo Fiorina, Stefan Radman, 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, Carlo Fiorina, Alessandro Scolaro, 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, Carlo Fiorina, Alessandro Scolaro, 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

Carlo Fiorina, Alessandro Scolaro, 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, Mathieu Hursin, Carlo Fiorina, Alessandro Scolaro

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