Prediction of thermohydraulics in shell side of CAP1400 steam generator by two-fluid porous media model

Abstract

Three-dimensional thermohydraulics in the shell side of the u-tube steam generator are essential for the thermal design and tube flow-induced vibration analysis, which are crucial for the equipment economy and integrity. In this work, the Eulerian two-fluid framework along with porous media model was employed to predict the thermal-hydraulic parameters in the shell side of the CAP1400 steam generator. The two-phase flow in the shell side was treated as flow in porous media with additional momentum and energy source terms for each phase to consider the effects of structure resistance and primary-to-shell heat transfer. The primary side was simplified by the multi-channel model with 16 equivalent tubes. The distributions of thermal-hydraulic parameters for each phase and the mixture phase were obtained. High non-uniformity can be observed for the flow and heat transfer parameters. The ratio between heat released in the hot side and cold side was as large as 2.7. The crossflow energy related to the flow-induced vibration was also derived to find the possible location of tube damage. The most probable location for a potential tube rupture locates at approximate 0.4 rad in the hot side.