4. METHOD OF SOLUTION
A so called volume-junction method is used to present fluid conservations. The primary system is divided into a number of special elements called "control-volumes". The system of partial differential equations describing fluid conservations for a stream-tube are integrated over a number of control volumes. The resulting set of simultaneous differential equations that is based on the assumptions of one-dimensional, homogeneous and thermal- equilibrium flow is linearized and solved for a small time increment by a simple explicit numerical technique.
The one-dimensional heat conduction equations describing temperature profiles within solid material are written in finite difference forms which are linearized and solved by the Crank-Nicholson implicit method. In order to simulate the blowdown heat transfer phenomena, the code has correlation packages for heat transfer coefficient and critical heat flux.
The heat generation in the core is given by a point reactor kinetics model with six groups of delayed neutrons and decay of eleven groups of fission products and actinides. The solution technique of the reactor kinetics is based on the Runge-Kutta method.
ALARM-B2 has the models to simulate various components incorporated in BWRs such as jet pumps, recirculation pumps, steam separators, valves, and so on. The discharge and injection systems are modeled by leak and fill systems, respectively.