Numerical Investigation of Melt Jet Breakup With Different Shapes in Water Pool

Abstract

During a severe accident in nuclear power plant, core damage may occur due to decay heat and molten fuel can pour into and interact with water resulting in steam explosion. The energetics of steam explosion strongly depends on the initial premixing stage during which the molten fuel undergoes a coarse fragmentation process, which determines the surface area for fuel-coolant contact and heat transfer. Extensive research has been done to understand the premixing stage, however, most of the studies are focused on the cylindrical jet interaction with water. In fact, during core melt, the molten fuel may pour near the edge of core, so the shapes and size of melt jet may differ significantly based on specific conditions. In this paper, numerically study on the melt jet breakup with different shapes in pool water are conducted, such as elliptical shape with VOF method. Firstly, the deformation of molten jet under the same conditions in 2D model is compared with 3D model and shows that the breakup of 3D model is quite different from 2D model, the integration of 3D model is maintained much better than 2D model. Then the characteristics of breakup of elliptic cylindrical melt jet are analyzed and compared with cylindrical melt jet. The results shows that the interface surface area of elliptic cylindrical jet is nearly twice the cylindrical jet.