Numerical Simulation for Effect of Rolling Motion on Thermal Stratification in a Surge Line

Abstract

Pressurizer surge lines are essential pipeline structure in NPPs, and the thermal stratification in surge line is recognized as one of the possible cause of thermal fatigue. In this paper, a Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) method has been adopted to simulate temperature fluctuations on the process of temperature rising in a pressurizer surge line under rolling motion of single degree of freedom. This work focuses on a fundamental description of differences of thermal stratification between the surge line rolling around the coordinate X-axis condition and that in a static state. The Large-eddy simulation (LES) model is employed to capture the details of temperature change in surge line. Temperature distributions near the inner wall of a surge line pipe with or without swinging were monitored and compared. The temperature differences between the top and bottom of the pipe sections are employed to represent the maximum temperature differences at all the monitored sections. As the surge line swinging, the pattern of temperature distribution and the length of thermal stratification development are different from that in a static. Fluid temperature fluctuation in surge line occur periodically during the fluid temperature rising when the surge line is rotated with the X-axis, and the temperature difference between top and bottom of the surge line is reduced in the same motion mode compared with the static state.