Case Studies in Thermal Engineering 40 (2022) 102548

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Case Studies in Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/csite

Analysis of effective thermal conductivity of pebble bed by

artificial neural network and its computational and
experimental verification
Chirag Sedani a, b, *, Maulik Panchal a, Vipul Tanna a, b, Paritosh Chaudhuri a, b,
Manoj Kumar Gupta a, b
a
Institute for Plasma Research, Bhat, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, 382428, India
b
Homi Bhabha National Institute, Anushaktinagar, Mumbai, 400094, India

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: While dealing with a solid-type ceramic breeding blanket for a fusion reactor, it is critical to
Thermal conductivity determine the basic and thermal properties of the functional material in the form of a pebble bed.
Pebble bed In the form of pebbles, lithium ceramics serve as the tritium breeder material in the fusion
Helium blanket. Effective thermal conductivity (keff) is one of the important thermal properties for the
ANN design and useful parameter to determine the performance of the blanket component. Artificial
DDPM-DEM
Neural Networks (ANN) are a popular machine learning technique for tuning between input and
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
output parameters. These networks can learn from examples (data set) and apply them when a
homogeneous event arises, making them able to work through genuine-time events. Hence, it can
save a lot of time and money for doing repetitive experiments and high-end simulations. This will
aid in the creation of a huge database on the pebble bed’s keff, which will be useful in the design
and development of fusion blankets. The findings of simulations and experiments are compared to
those predicted by the ANN model for the pebble bed’s thermal conductivity.
At IPR, a test setup for experiments has been developed using the steady-state and axial heat
flow approach. keff of Li2TiO3 has been measured for the pebbles of diameter of 0.8–1.2 mm
having packing fraction of ~62% and using helium environment at different temperatures
ranging from 100 ◦ C to 600 ◦ C at constant atmospheric pressure. keff has been compared with
pebble bed of stainless steel pebbles of different diameters (1, 2, 3, 1&3, & 2&3 mm) as well.
DDPM-DEM model has been used to generate the pebble bed and ANSYS-CFD simulations using
FLUENT have been performed to validate the results. The projected values using ANN are within
5% of the results obtained from simulations and experiments. The details of the DDPM-DEM and
ANN models, FLUENT simulations, and experimental results will be discussed in this paper.

Nomenclatre

α Thermal diffusivity (m2/s)

β Constant
Cp Specific Heat (J/gK)

* Corresponding author. Institute for plasma Research, Bhat, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, 382428, India.
E-mail address: chirag.sedani@ipr.res.in (C. Sedani).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csite.2022.102548
Received 25 July 2022; Received in revised form 18 October 2022; Accepted 7 November 2022
Available online 8 November 2022
2214-157X/© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
C. Sedani et al. Case Studies in Thermal Engineering 40 (2022) 102548

ε0 Porosity
Dp Diameter of pebble (m)
ρ Density (Kg/m3)
h Heat transfer coefficient (W/m2◦ C)
k Thermal conductivity (W/m◦ C)
kLi2 TiO3 Thermal conductivity of Li2TiO3 (W/m◦ C)
kHe Thermal conductivity of Helium (W/m◦ C)
kf Thermal conductivity of fluid (W/m◦ C)
ks Thermal conductivity of solid (W/m◦ C)
keff Effective thermal conductivity (W/m◦ C)
Nu Nusselt number
T Temperature (K)
P Pressure (MPa)

1. Introduction
Numerous ceramic breeder blanket designs for fusion reactors use pebble beds in a variety of ways [1&2]. The contribution of keff
should be carefully considered when designing breeder blankets [3–5]. It is very important to study the thermo-mechanical properties
of pebble bed as it plays very crucial role in the heat transfer mechanism. keff is an indicative and crucial parameter of the overall heat
transfer across a densely packed pebble bed. Such investigations have been reported in literature (both experimental and analytical)
[6–14].
keff consists of three components as described below:
(i) Heat transfer between two solid surfaces through radiation,
(ii) Heat transfer inside pebble material through conduction and
(iii) Heat transfer through contact region between pebbles through conduction [15].
keff has been investigated for numerical simulations utilizing DEM [16–18], DEM-CFD [19,20], FEM [21], etc. In some DEM-CFD
studies, the contact area is ignored by a shrinking process which reduces the pebble diameter without changing the position of the
particular pebble. In the current work, the keff of the pebble bed has been analyzed by ANN (Artificial Neural Network) and was
verified by experimental and simulation results. ANN models can learn from the data set and can be used to resolve real-time complex
problems. Such models are very handy and they can preserve an abundance of time and money. ANN may be used to forecast system
outcomes in any industry [22,23].
An experimental test setup has been designed and developed at IPR based on steady-state and axial heat flow methods (SSAHFM).
keff of Li2TiO3 pebbles of diameter 0.8–1.2 mm has been quantified. To better understand the heat transfer in pebble beds, a pebble bed
of stainless steel was taken into account. It had pebble beds of (1, 2, 3, 1&3, & 2&3 mm). For the simulation, the pebble bed geometry
has been generated using the DDPM-DEM model in ANSYS. This model gives a virtually packed bed, to get the actual bed the co­
ordinates of the pebbles need to be extracted, and then the actual geometry can be generated using a script. After generating the actual
pebble bed, the CFD thermal analysis has been performed using FLUENT 2021 R1. The rest of this paper has been divided into the
following sections. The method of heat transfer in pebble beds is covered in Section 2. The ANN (Artificial Neural Network) model is
described in Section 3. The setup of the experimental test is covered in Section 4. The CFD thermal study of pebble beds is covered in
Section 5. Results and discussion are found in Section 6. Section 7 concludes this essay by summarizing it and making some
recommendations.
Lithium ceramics are used as the tritium breeder material in the fusion blanket. ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental
Reactor), an experimental fusion reactor is under construction in France where these lithium ceramics will be used in the Test Balanket
Module (TBM) Breeding blankets in a fusion reactor have to breed the tritium required for D-T reaction and to convert nuclear energy
into heat extracted by a coolant. In order to design a breeder blanket, the detail heat transfer phenomena of the pebble bed, both
experimental and simulation are essential. Sometimes, experiments and simulations are time and resource consuming. Hence, ANN
may be used to predict the behaviour of the system as a complementary approach of simulation and experimental analysis. huge data
set is needed. Hence, experiments and simulations regarding heat transfer phenomena of the pebble bed are essential. Though,
sometimes experiments and simulations can be time consuming and needs huge chunk of money. To tackle that problem, ANN has been
introduced in order to predict the behaviour of the system.

2. Heat transfer mechanism in pebble bed

W. van Antwerpen et al. [24] has given the concept of heat transfer mechanism in pebble bed. Heat transfer in pebble bed happens
in three ways: effective thermal conductivity of bed with stagnant fluid (keff); conductivity of the fluid with turbulent mixing (kf);
conductivity of the solid spheres (ks). So, the effective thermal conductivity of the pebble bed is given by:

kbed = keff+ kf+ ks (1)

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Fig. 1. Heat transfer phenomena in pebble bed.

Fig. 2. Thermal diffusivity of (a) Helium and (b) Li2TiO3 [27].

The purge gas in a fusion reactor will pass through the pebble bed and extract tritium. The rate of heat transmission will also be
impacted by the velocity of gas. The microstructure of packed beds significantly affects the keff. The simultaneous consideration of local
pore structure and effective heat conductivity poses challenges for theoretical and practical approaches. Contact conduction will not
significantly affect the keff of the bed if the solid-to-fluid conductivity ratio is less than 20 [25]. Cheng Ren et al. [26] has given a heat
transfer mechanism in a packed pebble bed which explains, there are four possible ways for heat transfer in a pebble bed: (1) contact
area conduction, (2) solid conduction in the pebble itself, (3) surface radiation and (4) conduction through a gaseous medium.
In this paper, we have considered the natural convection of helium as a major process factor for the heat transfer mechanism. As it is
a steady-state problem, no reactions are happening forcefully. So, the ways heat transfer can take place are (1) conduction in pebble
itself, (2) conduction through contact region between pebbles, (3) conduction through a gaseous medium, and (4) natural convection
of gas inside pebble bed. All these phenomena are illustrated in Fig. 1. For the normal operation of the blanket, more than one
phenomenon will take place either in series or in parallel. Certainly, conduction through the pebble itself and conduction through the
contact region between pebbles will take place, but the role of the gaseous medium is very crucial in heat transfer mechanism.
In Fig. 1, blue color shows conduction through pebbles itself, red color shows conduction through the contact region between
pebbles. Whereas, yellow shows conduction through the gaseous medium and brown shows natural convection of the gaseous medium.
In case of conduction through the gaseous medium, the system needs to be at constant pressure. This will allow the gaseous molecules
to interact with each other and transfer heat through regional interactions. Whereas in natural convection, as the size of the gaseous
molecules are very small compare to the size of pebbles, they will start moving around as soon as they will get some external energy.
The dominating way for heat transfer to occur in gaseous media for natural convection is through thermal diffusion. Fig. 2 shows the
thermal diffusivity values of He and Li2TiO3 at different temperatures.
( )
As shown in the figure, the thermal diffusivity α = ρCk p of helium is very high as compared to Li2TiO3. Hence, the probability of
thermal diffusion taking place is high in helium. When diffusion takes place, it certainly creates density gradient in the gaseous
environment and hence, the natural convection takes place. Natural processes, such as buoyancy, are used to move fluids during
natural convection. Natural convection experiences a low heat transfer coefficient since the fluid velocity associated with it is also
relatively low. During the experiments it was observed that the gaseous medium plays a major role in the heat transfer inside the
pebble bed. The heat flux majorly depends on the gaseous media because, during the experiments, when the pebble bed was under
vacuum condition, the heat flux value was almost negligible. Whereas during the presence of helium at different pressure, the value of

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Fig. 3. Typical architecture of neural network [28].

Table 1
Parameters considered of ANN.

Input Parameters Range

Diameter of pebble 0.8–4 mm

Void Fraction (%) 0.30–0.42
Temperature 50–1000 ◦ C
Pressure 0.05–2 Bar

Fig. 4. Schematic of the experimental test setup.

heat flux was adequately acceptable. Hence, the heat transfer coefficient (h) for natural convection was taken into account using the
Nusselt number (Nu) for the calculation of keff of pebble bed. As the velocity of the gas inside the pebble bed for natural convection is
very difficult to measure, the lowest possible value of Nu was considered in the case of laminar flow of interest.

3. Artificial neural network (ANN)

This is an extension of the author’s earlier work [28], in which ANN was used to forecast the pressure drop in a pebble bed, to
estimate the keff of the pebble bed. An Artificial Neural Network is an attempt to replicate the network of neurons that make up the
human encephalon in artificial intelligence so that computers may comprehend information and reach decisions in a human-like
manner. In the artificial neural network, computers are trained to behave like entangled encephalon cells. An ANN typically

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Fig. 5. Experimental setup assembly

(a) TC and HFS arrangement, (b) Pebble bed inside container, (c) Assembly of the experimental setup.

consists of a huge number of parallel-running, tier-organized processors. The initial level of human visual processing receives un­
processed input data comparable to that of the optic nerve. Each following stage receives the exit from the preceding stage rather than
the raw entry, analogous to how neurons farther from the optic nerve receive information from those closer to it. The last level is where
the system output is produced. Fig. 3 depicts the typical architecture of a neural network.
Different input parameters as shown in Table 1 such as pebble diameter, void fraction, temperature, and so on were taken into
account, with keff serving as the current work’s output parameter. Following the creation of a data set (~500 data points) based on
these parameters, the data set was split into three parts: training (60% of data points), testing (20% of data points) and validation (20%
of data points). During the training period, the neurons create layer by layer the cognition between input and output, which is then
assessed during the testing period. The ANN model is ready for prognostication as soon as the testing is completed.

4. Experimental test setup

To determine the pebble bed for fusion blanket’s keff, an experimental test setup was created. The SSAHFM form the foundation of
the test arrangement. The goal of the experiment is to create a 1D temperature gradient in order to calculate the pebble bed’s actual
thermal conductivity.
Fig. 4 consists of the following main components: pebble bed, heater, sink, insulation, thermocouple (TC), and heat flux sensor
(HFS). The heater is at the top position of the pebble bed and the sink is at the bottom of the pebble bed. There is a smoother made of
copper between heater and pebble bed for uniform heat distribution. The heater can go up to a maximum of 900 ◦ C. The heat generated
from the heater flows initially from smoother, making it enable to distribute heat uniformly to pebble bed. The heat flows through the
pebble bed and moves towards the bottom portion of the pebble bed which is the sink. The heat flux throughout the pebble bed is
measured by HFS which is placed in between the sink and pebble bed. The pebble bed container is a hollow container with an inner
diameter of 45 mm and a height of 40 mm. The temperature distribution inside the pebble bed is measured using a thermocouple at 3
different locations in the axial direction as shown in Fig. 5. The entire pebble bed is insulated by fused silica. Also, the entire setup is
enclosed by stainless steel container.

5. CFD thermal analysis of pebble bed

The pebble bed was initially created using the DDPM-DEM module as demonstrated in a prior work [28], and then the CFD thermal

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Fig. 6. Pebble bed generated using DDPM-DEM.

analysis of the pebble bed was performed on it. The pebble bed is immediately imported for meshing after it has been created. Sharing
topology must be enabled in order to mesh the pebble bed. As a result, it will be simple to mesh and allow the contact area of the pebble
bed to be thought of as one body. The geometry in Fig. 6 is successfully meshed with 8911961 discretization elements total, an
orthogonal mesh quality of 0.75, and a skewness of 0.23 before being imported into Fluent 2021 R1 for CFD thermal analysis. The
boundary conditions for these simulations are:

1. The top surface of the cylinder is considered as a heater, hence given temperature as input.
2. The bottom surface of the cylinder is considered as sink, hence given convection (60–80 W/m2◦ C) as input.
3. Other surfaces of the cylinder are considered as the adiabatic wall.
4. Heat flux (2000–20,000 W/m2) is monitored at the bottom surface of the cylinder.
5. Material properties of the pebbles and gaseous environment are temperature dependent, hence defined using the following
equations [29&30]:
( )
1 − ε0
kLi2 TiO3 = 4.77 – 5.10 × 10− 3 T + 3.12 × 10− 6 T 2 (2)
1 + β ε0

β = 1.06 – 2.88 × 10− 4 T , 0.07 ≤ ε0 ≤ 0.27, 300K ≤ T ≤ 1050K

( )0.68 [ ( )− 1.85
]
T T
kHe = 0.1448 1 + 2.5 × 10− 3 P1.17 , T(K), P(MPa) (3)
273 273

Under these boundary conditions, the simulation results were obtained. Here it is to be noted that, the geometry used for the
simulation is not of similar dimensions as the experimental setup. The size of the cylinder is reduced to make the simulation process
smooth and efficient, as the thermal conductivity is a material property, it should not be affected by the size and shape of the geometry.
The diameters of the pebbles are same and the packing fraction is near the same. Fig. 7 shows the packing fraction of all pebble beds.

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Fig. 7. Packing fraction of pebble bed.

6. Results and discussion

Initial steady-state studies of thermal conductivity measurement were conducted using stainless steel pebbles of various sizes in
order to benchmark the results (1, 2, 3, 1&3, & 2&3 mm). A CFD thermal study was carried out concurrently with the experiments. The
simulations’ boundary conditions were maintained to be identical to those of the experiments. Outcomes from simulations and ex­
periments were combined, and the results were then contrasted with those anticipated by ANN. Natural convection was also taken into
account in this calculation of the thermal conductivity of the pebble bed in addition to conduction through the stones and their contact
area. Hence, the calculation for the thermal conductivity is as follow:
( ) ( )
ke ke
keff = + 1.3 Nu
kf Nu=0 kf

Or (4)
keff = (ke )Nu=0 + 1.3 h Dp

Above equation has been given by Noriaki Wakao [31] to measure the keff of packed bed. Here, Dp is diameter of pebble, h is heat
transfer coefficient. The term (ke )Nu=0 defines the effective thermal conductivity due to pure conduction. Hence, this equation con­
siders conduction and convection to evaluate keff of pebble bed. As natural convection is taken into account, the value of Nu is

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Fig. 8. Effective thermal conductivity of stainless steel mono sized pebble bed.

Fig. 9. Effective thermal conductivity of stainless steel binary sized pebble bed.

Fig. 10. Effective thermal conductivity of Li2TiO3.

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Fig. 11. CFD thermal analysis of pebble bed.

considered as 0.1 [31]. The results of thermal conductivity of stainless steel pebble bed obtained from experiments, simulations, and
ANN are shown in Fig. 8 and Fig. 9.
The results show that the thermal conductivity of stainless steel pebble bed increases with increase in temperature and packing
fraction as well. After benchmarking the results of the stainless steel pebble bed, the same procedure was performed to obtain the keff of
the Li2TiO3 (Pebble Diameter: 0.8–1.2 mm) pebble bed. The results obtained are shown in Fig. 10. In addition, the results were also
compared with Ali Abou-Sena et al. [8].
Fig. 10 shows the keff of the Li2TiO3 pebble bed having packing fraction of ~62%. Here, the values of current work remain almost
constant with temperature which is because of consideration of natural convection whereas in Ali Abou-Sena’s work it is decreasing
with an increase in temperature. Abou-Sena has only considered thermal conduction and has used Fourier’s law to calculate thermal
conductivity. As per previous study published by Maulik et al. [32] it shows the decreasing trend of thermal conductivity when only
conduction is considered. In steady-state, the natural convection of He plays a very crucial role in terms of heat transfer. Fig. 11 shows
the contour of temperature and density due to heat transfer inside the pebble bed.
The temperature contour shown in Fig. 11 defined the conduction transpiring inside the pebble bed whereas, the density contour
shown in the same defines the natural convection phenomena. It is very arduous to measure the natural convection of He during
experiments, but through density difference, we can confirm the presence of natural convection inside the pebble bed.

7. Conclusion
The steady-state axial approach has been used in this study to examine the keff of the pebble bed. The ANN model is used to forecast
the keff of a pebble bed, and CFD thermal simulations and testing have supported its accuracy. Along with conduction, the natural
phenomenon of convection is thought to be essential for the transmission of heat. Thus, the calculation of thermal conductivity has
used the lowest Nusselt number (Nu = 0.1) as a factor. Initially, stainless steel balls of various sizes were used in the studies (1, 2, 3,

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1&3, & 2&3 mm). The thermal conductivity of the pebble bed is significantly impacted by the packing fraction. The thermal con­
ductivity of the pebble bed improves with an increase in packing percentage in the case of stainless steel balls. Due to an increase in
packing percentage, the thermal conductivity of the binary-sized pebble bed is greater than that of the mono-sized pebble bed.
Simulation and ANN were used to validate and benchmark those trials. Following a satisfactory verification, Li2TiO3 findings were
checked using the same process. After confirmation, it is discovered that Li2TiO3’s thermal conductivity almost stays constant as
temperature rises. The results are all found to be in good agreement and within accuracy of ±5% of one another.

Author contribution statement

The study’s inception and design involved input from all authors. Experiments, data collection, Simulations and analysis were
performed by Chirag Sedani, Maulik Panchal, Vipul Tanna, Paritosh Chaudhuri and Manoj Kumar Gupta. Chirag Sedani wrote the
manuscript’s initial draught, while all of the other authors offered feedback on earlier draughts. The final manuscript was read and
approved by all writers.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.

Data availability

The authors do not have permission to share data.

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