CFD study on onset of liquid entrainment through ADS-4 branch line in AP1000

Abstract

The consequences of liquid entrainment through the fourth stage Automatic Depressurization System (ADS-4) of Advanced Passive nuclear power reactor (AP1000) are decreased reactor core coolant inventory and increased resistance to quick depressurization of the reactor primary coolant system. Therefore, the accurate knowledge of the Onset of Liquid Entrainment (OLE) is critical to nuclear reactor safety (NRS) assessment. In this study, three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of OLE were carried out using a two-fluid Eulerian model of ANSYS Fluent CFD code along with the renormalization group (RNG) κ-ε turbulence model for each phase. In OLE phenomena, the interfacial drag has a significant effect but available choices of interfacial drag coefficient in Fluent were not suitable due to the presence of droplet clusters in entrainment. Therefore, a modified interfacial drag coefficient accounting for droplet clusters was used. The transient simulations were performed with this modified CFD model and validated against ADS-4 Depressurization and Entrainment TEst Loop (ADETEL) data. The comparison between CFD calculations and experimental data shows a good agreement. Furthermore, the effects of the liquid mass flow rates and single inlet on OLE were also investigated with the validated CFD model. To improve the understanding of OLE phenomena, the liquid volume fraction and gas velocity field distributions were also studied.