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Summary: The fuel rods in the lead‐based fast reactor (LFR) are usually supported by wire spacer, and the presence of the wire results in the complexity of the thermal‐hydraulic analysis in rod bundles. In this study, several previous experimental research about lead‐bismuth eutectic flowing through the rod bundle are investigated. Based on the collected experimental data, a series of flow and heat transfer correlations in the wire‐fixed rod bundle are compared and evaluated. The recommended correlations are then implemented into the in‐house sub‐channel analysis code SACOS‐PB. Furthermore, to account for the changes in the channel cross‐section parameters caused by the wire spacer, two optional wire geometric treatments were added to the code: axially‐averaged approach and axially‐varied approach with extra cross‐flow enhancement model. 19‐rod bundle and 61‐rod bundle tests are used to validate the optimized code. The deviations for the temperature differences of cladding and coolant in internal sub‐channels are within 25%, and the axially‐varied approach shows a higher prediction accuracy, which proves that the improvement of the SACOS‐PB are reliable. This work could provide a reference for the subsequent design and development of the LFR core. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]