Natural circulation two-phase flow characteristics in a rod bundle channel under stable and rolling motion conditions

Abstract

Natural circulation two-phase flow characteristics are studied under stable and rolling motion conditions in a rod bundle channel. The mass quality, flow rate and frictional pressure drop variation results with increasing heat flux are given and the effects of system pressure and inlet subcooling are analyzed. The flow rate decline is observed under high mass quality conditions since the frictional pressure drop is large enough. The flow instability characteristics for different stages with increasing heat flux are given. The main reason for the flow instability characteristics variation is that the dominant factor changes from subcooled boiling to the pressure drop oscillation. The experimental results indicate that increasing the system pressure and the inlet resistance of the test section, including moving the compressible volume to a downstream position, can delay the onset of the flow instability. The time-average flow parameters under rolling motion conditions are mainly influenced by the stable mass quality and the rolling parameters. For high stable mass quality conditions, the time-average two-phase flow parameters decrease a little compared to stable results. With the stable mass quality decreasing, the time-average mass quality gradually increases with the rolling frequency. For further lower stable mass quality conditions, the time-average values are even larger than stable values. For the frictional resistance calculation, a few correlations are evaluated and recommended. Additionally, new correlations are fitted for stable and time-average two-phase frictional pressure drop prediction in high mass quality conditions.