  This article condenses current endeavors and improvements in the expansion of
applications of the DualSPHysics code to analyze heat transfer in a nuclear
reactor core. This includes the essential conservation equations and certain
physical considerations, particularly the thermal conductivity variable model,
considering changes in the reference density to maintain the accuracy in the
solution. Conventionally, to study these sorts of systems, Eulerian methods
have been developed, nevertheless, this kind of method based on well-defined
mesh shows major restrictions. The DualSPHysics code, based on Smoothed
Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) technique, has shown to be a real and robust
alternative since it involves a free mesh approach, and the numerical method is
very well parallelized in both computational and graphical process units (CPU
and GPU). The results for the improvements developed in the present work show
an exceptionally good approximation with other simulation approaches and also
with experimental observation in the three cases studied (1) heat transfer
analysis in a bidimensional system with thermal conductivity coefficient k
variable, (2) natural convection heat transfer in a horizontal cylindrical ring
similar to the space between the fuel rod and the cladding and (3) heat
transfer in an experimental nuclear fuel rod square arrangement like in a
Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) nuclear core. Enhancements to this code
(DualSPHysics) to use it in nuclear applications are fundamental in the
exploitation of this technique in crucial areas of study.
