Numerical Study of Bubble Coalescence and Breakup in the Reactor Fuel Channel with a Vaned Grid

Tenglong Cong and Xiang Zhang
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Tenglong Cong: Fundamental Science on Nuclear Safety and Simulation Technology Laboratory, Harbin Engineering University, 145 Nantong St, Harbin 150001, China
Xiang Zhang: Fundamental Science on Nuclear Safety and Simulation Technology Laboratory, Harbin Engineering University, 145 Nantong St, Harbin 150001, China

Energies, 2018, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: The characteristics of bubbles of different sizes in fuel assembly are vital to two-phase flow resistance and heat transfer capacity. However, due to the swirl flow caused by the mixing vane, bubbles can crowd at the heated surface, which may anticipate the occurrence of departure from nucleation boiling. In the current work, the adiabatic two-phase flow in a simplified fuel assembly was analyzed by using the Eulerian two-fluid model and the MUSIG (MUltiple SIze Group) model. This computational domain consists of two coolant channels and two sets of vaned spacers, with three sets of periodic boundary conditions at the side faces of the domain. The distributions of vapor phase and bubble diameters were obtained, based on which the effects of mixing vanes on the bubble characteristics were analyzed. Vapor phase crowded at the rod surface in the higher inlet vapor fraction case, but crowded in the channel center in the lower inlet vapor fraction cases. This work can be used as a reference for the design of mixing vanes to avoid the anticipation of departure of nucleation boiling that may be caused by unreasonable design.

Keywords: MUSIG; fuel assembly; bubble crowding; two-phase computational fluid dynamics (CFD) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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