Liquid lead flow-accelerated corrosion testing with the rotating cage set-up: A CFD optimisation

Abstract

In this study the rotating cage setup, a simple laboratory methodology extensively used for flow-accelerated corrosion and erosion-corrosion testing, is optimized via CFD simulations for flow-accelerated corrosion testing with liquid lead for lead-cooled nuclear reactors. In the rotating cage, samples manufactured from the material of interest are rotated in a bath of corrosive liquid to mimic the shear flow conditions found in actual applications such as pipes, heat exchangers and pumps. The optimized rotating cage design presented here allows circumventing the high flow resistance associated with the high density of liquid lead, and yields a more uniform flow around the testing samples that better reproduces actual pipe/channel flow conditions, which is instrumental to clearly and univocally associate the observed corrosion rates with the fluid shear.