Papalexandris, MiltiadisPicard, AlexandreAlexandrePicard2025-05-142025-05-142025-05-142023https://hdl.handle.net/2078.2/30966Since the Fukushima disaster of 2011, there has been a growing interest in the scientific community to investigate the physical phenomena taking place in nuclear pools in order to improve their safety and prevent loss-of-cooling accidents that can lead to the release of a considerable amount of radioactive material. This thesis is part of this framework and aims to improve the understanding of evaporation-driven turbulent convection in spent fuel pools. In this paper, the focus is on the thermal mixing of water below the interface of a spent fuel pool modelled as a cuboidal domain. To study this turbulent flow, a direct numerical simulation code written in C++ is employed. The effect of the airflow above the interface is modelled rather than simulated to estimate the evaporation rate at the interface. This work highlights the role of ambient temperature on mean flow properties and statistics and the influence of the aspect ratio on the emerging flow patterns.Spent fuel poolTurbulent flowDNS simulationstext::thesis::master thesisthesis:38446