Future fusion reactors such as tokamaks (ITER, DEMO) will have to demonstrate the safety of their systems, validated by thermal hydraulic codes. To meet this requirement, the CATHARE code has been chosen as scientific computing tool. The work will consist in adapting the CATHARE code to helium at low temperatures and then to benchmark it with other thermal hydraulic codes used by the DRF (Direction de la Recherche Fondamentale), as well as with experimental data available at CEA Grenoble.
The study will be threefold. The first phase will be dedicated to a literature survey on the thermal hydraulics of helium, featured by closing equations for monophasic helium (friction and heat transfer coefficients). In a second step, the engineer will implement these laws in the code and perform some validations tests. The last part will focus a benchmark based on three applications: the study of a cryo-pump, the study of a supercritical helium discharge and the study of a superconducting cable.