Natural convection provides a means for circulating fluids without the use of
pumps. This type of system is of great interest for a wide variety of applications,
including solar heaters, process industry, and nuclear reactors. Natural
convection will play a vital role in the area of passive safety and reliability,
particularly for the development of Generation IV nuclear energy systems.
This study mainly focuses on the linear stability analysis of asymmetrically
heated/cooled natural convection loops with large temperature variations across
the heated core. The study targets the Argonne Lead Loop Facility (ALLF), a
concept for an experiment loop to support the development of the Secure
Transportable Autonomous Reactor-Liquid Metal (STAR-LM) at Argonne
National Laboratory, using lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) as the primary reactor
coolant.
A one-dimensional linear stability analysis is performed and the Nyquist
criterion is employed to find the linear stability boundary of both forward and
backward circulations. It was found that the natural circulations could be linearly
unstable in a high Reynolds number region. Increasing loop friction makes a
forward circulation more stable, but destabilizes the corresponding backward
circulation under the same heating/cooling conditions. The preliminary results suggest that as the Peclet number decreases, the forward circulation is prone to
become unstable while the backward circulation is prone to remain stable. / Graduation date: 2003
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/32151 |
| Date | 28 June 2002 |
| Creators | Tang, Hong |
| Contributors | Wu, Qiao |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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