Real-time analysis of power plant thermohydraulic phenomena

In a simulator tool for simulating a power plant thermohydraulic system having a plurality of thermohydraulic parameters and a plurality of thermodynamic states, said simulator being responsive to a set of initial and boundary conditions representing said plurality of thermohydraulic parameters of said power plant thermohydraulic system parameters at a point where a simulation is to begin, comprising:

• a single computer having an operating system for executing software and memory;
• a software program loaded in said computer memory and including a model of said power plant thermohydraulic system as a plurality of nodes, and a solution set of equations operable to determine changes in said plurality of thermohydraulic parameters and thermodynamic states during a real time marching in response to a constant time step and said plurality of thermohydraulic parameters, said thermohydraulic system comprising a two-phase thermohydraulic system;
• and
• a matrix solver package for minimizing computation time to solve simultaneously said solution set of equations during real time marching under constant time step for simulating all power plant operations in real time, characterized by (i) a matrix solution code generation during an off-line development for matrix inversion and factorization, (ii) an optimization of matrix inversion, matrix factorization and execution of the solution of factorized matrices to produce an optimized solver package, and (iii) an execution of the optimized solver package during an on-line environment to solve said solution set.

A computer implemented method for simulating a power plant thermohydraulic system comprising the steps of:

• modeling the power plant thermohydraulic system as a plurality of nodes;
• providing a solution set of equations comprising
• a fast plurality of basic field equations having one noncondensible parameter field equation, the first plurality of field equations having a second plurality of independent field variables;
• a drift equation for correlating the first plurality of field equations with the independent field variables of those equations;
• an interfacial mass balance equation for determining an interfacial mass transfer rate;
• a set of constitutive correlations so that there is closure between the first plurality of field equations, the interfacial mass balance equation and the independent field variables;
• and
• a plurality of state equations for determining dependent thermodynamic variables;
• and
• selecting a plurality of thermohydraulic parameters representative of an initial and boundary condition for said power plant thermohydraulic system;
• and
• simulating a sequence of operating conditions for said power plant thermohydraulic system with a high fidelity tolerance in real time as a function of time and said selected plurality of thermohydraulic parameters by applying said solution set of equations to said selected plurality of thermohydraulic parameters using a predictor-corrector numerical scheme and a constant time step.

Apparatus for real time simulation of a power plant thermohydraulic system having a plurality of thermohydraulic parameters and a sequence of operating conditions comprising:

• a computer having an operating system for executing software and a memory storage device;
• a mathematical model of the power plant thermohydraulic system as a plurality of interconnected nodes, the mathematical model being stored in said memory storage device;
• a first set of thermohydraulic parameters corresponding to a selected power plant thermohydraulic system operating condition and a flow regime of the plurality of thermohydraulic parameters;
• means for inputting said first set of thermohydraulic parameters into said memory storage device;
• a solution set of equations comprising:
• a first plurality of basic field equations having one noncondensible parameter field equation, the first plurality of basic field equations having a second plurality of independent field variables;
• a drift equation for correlating the first plurality of basic field equations with the independent field variables;
• an interfacial mass balance equation for determining an interfacial mass transfer rate;
• a set of constitutive correlations to provide closure between the first plurality of basic field equations, the interfacial mass balance equation and the independent field variables;
• and
• a plurality of state equations for determining dependent thermodynamic variables said solution set of equations being stored in said memory storage device;
• the computer being operable to simulate in real time a sequence of thermohydraulic parameters representative of said sequence of power plant operating conditions as a function of time and said first set of thermohydraulic parameters, the computer comprising means for applying a two step semi-implicit numerical scheme to solve simultaneously the solution set of equations in response to an input set of thermohydraulic parameters using a constant time step and determining an output set of thermohydraulic parameters corresponding to said simulated power plant thermohydraulic system condition with a high fidelity tolerance, wherein said first set of thermohydraulic parameters is an initial input set of thermohydraulic parameters, and each output set of thermohydraulic parameters is thereafter the next input set of thermohydraulic parameters for a following time step.