Return to search

Two-phase flow experiments in a model of the hot leg of a pressurised water reactor

In order to investigate the two-phase flow behaviour in a complex reactor-typical geometry and to supply suitable data for CFD code validation, a model of the hot leg of a pressurised water reactor was built at FZD. The hot leg model is operated in the pressure chamber of the TOPFLOW test facility, which is used to perform high-pressure experiments under pressure equilibrium with the inside atmosphere of the chamber. This technique makes it possible to visualise the two-phase flow through large windows, also at reactor-typical pressure levels. In order to optimise the optical observation possibilities, the test section was designed with a rectangular cross-section.
Experiments were performed with air and water at 1.5 and 3.0 bar at room temperature as well as with steam and water at 15, 30 and 50 bar and the corresponding saturation temperature (i.e. up to 264°C). The total of 194 runs are divided into 4 types of experiments covering stationary co-current flow, counter-current flow, flow without water circulation and transient counter-current flow limitation (CCFL) experiments.
This report provides a detailed documentation of the experiments including information on the experimental setup, experimental procedure, test matrix and on the calibration of the measuring devices. The available data is described and data sheets were arranged for each experiment in order to give an overview of the most important parameters. For the cocurrent flow experiments, water level histograms were arranged and used to characterise the flow in the hot leg. In fact, the form of the probability distribution was found to be sensitive to the boundary conditions and, therefore, is useful for the CFD comparison.
Furthermore, the flooding characteristics of the hot leg model plotted in terms of the classical Wallis parameter or Kutateladze number were found to fail to properly correlate the data of the air/water and steam/water series. Therefore, a modified Wallis parameter is proposed, which takes the effect of viscosity into account.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa.de:bsz:d120-qucosa-85349
Date14 March 2012
CreatorsSeidel, T., Beyer, M.
ContributorsHelmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf,
PublisherHelmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf
Source SetsHochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typedoc-type:report
Formatapplication/pdf
Relationdcterms:isPartOf:Wissenschaftlich-Technische Berichte / Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf; HZDR-010

Page generated in 0.0025 seconds