Flow Characteristics of Upward Two-Phase Flows in a Rod Bundle Geometry

Abstract

Abstract In the present paper, the local two-phase flow parameters were measured with a four-sensor optical probe in adiabatic upward air-water two-phase flows in a 6 × 6 vertical rod bundle with rod diameter of 10 mm, pitch of 16.7 mm, square channel box side length of 100 mm and hydraulic equivalent diameter (DH) of 18.7 mm. The local measurements were performed in an octant triangular region of the rod bundle cross-section at the axial position with height-to-diameter ratio (z/DH) of 149 under a total of 16 flow conditions. The local void fraction, interfacial area concentration (IAC), bubble diameter and bubble velocity were obtained in the four-sensor probe measurements. Both of the measured void fraction and IAC show their radial local distributions with the core-peaking and wall-peaking shapes which are closely linked with the superficial velocity of two phases. The distribution shapes tend to change from the core-peaking to the wall-peaking when the superficial liquid velocity (<jf>) increases and the superficial gas velocity (<jg>) decreases. The measured diameters of local bubbles keep the similar values in the measuring cross-section, increase when the <jg> increases and decrease when the <jf> increases. The bubbles behave with the velocities whose main flow direction component keeps a typical radial power-law (core-peaking) profile and whose cross-sectional velocity components show a significant trend of bubbles migrating from the center to the wall region of the channel box especially under high <jf> conditions. The area-averaged results of void fraction and IAC were obtained by a cross-sectional area-averaging scheme. The resultant area-averaged void fraction and IAC were used to check the void fraction predicting capability of two drift-flux correlations and the IAC prediction performance of two IAC correlations respectively. The applicability of these correlations to the rod bundle geometry was discussed and concluded finally in this paper.