Abstract
In the 4th generation sodium fast nuclear reactors (SFR), different phenomena can lead to gaseous microbubbles presence in the primary liquid sodium pool. This paper investigates the ability of nonlinear acoustics techniques to characterize these microbubbles presence. The goal is here to determine the void fraction (volume fraction of free gas) and the histogram of bubbles radius. Different acoustic techniques are currently developed at CEA. Among others, the nonlinear mixing of two frequencies [V. L. Newhouse and P. M. Shankar, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 75(5), 1473–1477 (1984)] is under study. Based on the nonlinear behavior of bubble resonance, this technique allows determining the radius histogram of a bubble cloud. Two different mixing techniques are here presented: the mixing of two high frequencies and the mixing of a high and a low frequency. The first step is an air-water experimental set-up. Microbubbles clouds are generated with a like dissolved air flotation process and an optical device gives us reference measures. Generated bubbles have radii in the range of several microns to several tens of microns. The developed experimental procedure allows us to determine the bubble size’s histograms with accuracy never reported yet.
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