Abstract
Natural convection in a volumetrically heated fluid is of significant importance related to the In-Vessel Retention (IVR) issue. The COPRA facility is designed to simulate the lower plenum of reactor vessel at 1:1 scale for the Chinese advanced PWR, which is a two-dimensional 1/4 circular slice structure with an inner radius of 2.2 m. Water was used as simulant in COPRA-L1 tests. Due to the full scale geometry, The Rayleigh numbers within the corium pools could reach to 1016, matching those in the prototypical situation during severe accident. Due to the high Rayleigh numbers and high turbulence in the melt pool, we choose the Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) method to do the numerical calculations. The LES method can better capture the heat transfer characteristic in a high-Rayleigh number volumetrically heated liquid pool. The numerical results of pool temperature and heat flux distribution were compared with those from COPRA-L1 tests.
Published Version
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