The History of Multiphase Science and Computational Fluid Dynamics by Robert W. Lyczkowski

Author:Robert W. Lyczkowski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

I didn’t contact Vic at all until 2009 at the time I started writing my paper for Dimitri’s Festschrift and which forms the outline of this book [2]. Vic has never bothered to write up a history of RELAP5. Therefore, I had to rely on material sent to me by him and his record notebooks which I copied. I also had to rely on material sent to me by Larry Ybarrondo, Charlie, and Dan Hughes, as well as that gleaned from reports and journal publications to piece together a brief summary history of RELAP5 for this chapter.

As discussed in Sect. 7.​5, there was a meeting of Vic and Charlie with Tong, members of the AEC RSR and Regulatory and others on June 28, 1974, in Germantown called the Advanced Code (SLOOP) status review meeting. The material pertaining to RELAP5 is now reviewed for the reader because of its historical significance. Before this meeting took place, a May 8 letter from Tong which was passed on to Vic, mentions using RELAP5 as an intermediate step between the existing code (i.e., RELAP4) and the advanced system code (i.e., SLOOP) some of which modules will be developed elsewhere. This is the earliest recorded mention of RELAP5 that I can find. Then it was at this meeting that the very first mention of RELAP5 is made in Vic’s record notebook. Some of the notes of this meeting are in Charlie’s handwriting which differs significantly from Vic’s. Fabic talked about long-range planning indicating that starting in June 1975 RELAP4 would be phased out, and RELAP5 would be phased in to be completed by December 1976 at which time there is a reference to RST starting. There is no indication as to what RST stands for—Reactor Safety Transient?

Charlie completely left the SLOOP code effort in 1975. When he returned to EG&G, Idaho Inc. in 1980, he became Manager of the LOFT Program Division. Vic stayed on as Manager of the Analytical Model Development Branch for a short while. He stepped down shortly before the SLOOP code imploded. Even though the SLOOP code project failed, the groundwork and experience gained during its aborted three and one-half year development would prove to be invaluable to Vic who, together with Dick Wagner and John Trapp, would initiate the development of the RELAP5 code which it turns out became a success used throughout the world. But how did it really start? Nobody, not even Vic knew the real story. The major success of the SLOOP code was the discovery of the existence of complex characteristics for the one-dimensional two-phase two-fluid model as documented extensively in Chaps. 6, 7, and 8.

With the change of contractors from ANC to EG&G Idaho, Inc. in 1976 and subsequent reorganization to form the Water Reactor Safety Organization, Larry rose from Manager of the LOFT Division, replaced by Charlie, to become the Associate General Manager of Nuclear Technology. In this powerful position, he had jurisdiction over the LOFT experimental and analytical programs, including the overall computer code development and technical support programs for the NRC.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.