Bubble fragmentation characteristics during the injection of subcooled water jet into hot liquid pool

Abstract

Bubble fragmentation and size distribution in hot and cold fluid jet interaction are fundamental for industries such as energy and metallurgy, especially for safety analysis after steam generator tube rupture (SGTR) accidents in lead-cooled fast reactors. The opaqueness to light of the molten lead pool makes it difficult to capture the gas-liquid interface behavior and thus lacks relevant data. In this paper, silicone oil was used instead of lead to simulate the injection process of the SGTR accident. Then the jet visualization experiments were carried out to investigate the bubble fragmentation characteristics. The visualization results show that the jet between the hot and cold fluids process is accompanied by strong thermal interactions, eventually leading to many bubbles dispersed in the high-temperature liquid pool. Secondly, four mechanisms of action affecting bubble size were elaborated in this paper, among which local vapor explosion is the primary mechanism of bubble fragmentation. Finally, the data revealed that bubble size presented a lognormal distribution, and the fragmented bubble size distribution was modeled. This study is promising to provide guidance for the bubble behavior characteristics after SGTR accidents in lead-cooled fast reactors.