PIV measurements of turbulent jet and pool mixing produced by a steam jet discharge in a subcooled water pool

Abstract

This experimental research is on the fluid-dynamic features produced by a steam injection into a subcooled water pool. The relevant phenomena could often be encountered in water cooled nuclear power plants. Two major topics, a turbulent jet and the internal circulation produced by a steam injection, were investigated separately using a particle image velocimetry (PIV) as a non-intrusive optical measurement technique. Physical domains of both experiments have a two-dimensional axi-symmetric geometry of which the boundary and initial conditions can be readily and well defined. The turbulent jet experiments with the upward discharging configuration provide the parametric values for quantitatively describing a turbulent jet such as the self-similar velocity profile, central velocity decay, spreading rate, etc. And in the internal circulation experiments with the downward discharging configuration, typical flow patterns in a whole pool region are measured in detail, which reveals both the local and macroscopic characteristics of the mixing behavior in a pool. This quantitative data on the condensing jet-induced mixing behavior in a pool could be utilized as benchmarking for a CFD simulation of relevant phenomena.