DELOCA, COMPUTER CODE SIMULATING OF CANDU FUEL CHANNEL BEHAVIOR IN LOCA

DELOCA computer code is software developed as an interactive program in Visual Basic 5 to simulate the thermo-mechanical behavior of CANDU fuel channel under postulated LOCA conditions, to simulate pressure tubes ballooning phenomenon. The modeling of temperature transient conditions for both pressure and calandria tubes, moderator and also the material properties dependence versus temperature are the most important features of the code. DELOCA code is used in this paper to simulate the fuel channel response at transient conditions that are described by heating rate of inside pressure tube surface. The temperature rate values used were: 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, respective, 50 degrees C/s. Also, DELOCA is used to perform a fuel channel analysis taking into account a postulated accident conditions for RIH 5%.