The annular fuel can increase the power density of the reactor due to its double-sided cooling, which is of great significance to the miniaturization and long-life operation of the pressurized water reactor.

This study aims at the calculation method of effective temperature of annular fuel cell by developing the thermal-hydraulic analysis code named THCAFS (Thermal-Hydraulic Code of Annular Fuel with Single channel) for annular fuel, and establishing a calculation model for the effective temperature of the annular fuel cell.

Based on THCAFS, the thermal-hydraulic performance of the annular fuel cell designed by Westinghouse 4-loop PWR was analyzed, and the Code-to-Code comparison was carried out with the calculation results of VIPRE-01, TAFIX and NACAF. At the same time, the Monte Carlo code SERPENT was employed to simulate the radial power distribution and burnup process in the fuel rod, and the self-developed code THCAFS was used to simulate the thermodynamic behavior in the fuel rod, and the radial power distribution, nuclide density change and cell temperature field.

The results show that THCAFS can be preliminarily applied to annular fuel design and thermal-hydraulic analysis. The maximum deviation of the ratio between the fitting function power and the simulated power under different fuel consumption does not exceed 2%. This effective temperature calculation method can also provide important reference value for the mechanism study of the relevant annular fuel resonance effective temperature.