Application of Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis to the design of liquid metal technology for fusion devices

Engineering design of fusion reactors constitutes a clear challenge for the need to overcome several new technological edges in almost every engineering aspect, from the magnetic to the material technology passing trough the thermal engineering design. Safety assessment of fusion reactors should be clearly provided to the regulatory bodies for licencing. For this reason, the availability of well proven and validated engineering tools is a must. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis seems to be one of these tools for the thermal-hydraulic and magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) design of some components. Many of current design of some components as blanket modules for Tritium generation uses liquid metals as of its key components. The implementation of turbulence and other thermal-hydraulic and MHD features in available CFD codes are discussed in this paper, pointing out the need for international collaboration to improve these available engineering tools for its confidence application with liquid metal in fusion engineering.