Research on the flywheel clearance flow and heat transfer characteristics in a horizontal canned motor reactor coolant pump

Abstract

Flywheel is an important component for the canned motor reactor coolant pump (RCP). The flywheel of horizontal canned motor reactor coolant pump (HRCP) is different from RCP’s flywheel. Its clearance width or different thermal conductivity structure would affect the flow structure of flywheel clearance flow, and then affect temperature distribution of the clearance, which would further affects the life and stability of flywheel. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the flow and heat transfer characteristics of flywheel clearance flow in detail. This paper applies a Detached Eddy Simulation (DES) method to study the flywheel clearance flow of HRCP. The results show that the DES method can capture the small-scale vortex structure in turbulence Taylor-Couette flow and then give a more refined flow field morphology. The authors further study the regularity of flywheel clearance flow with different thermal conductivity structure, and the results indicate that optimizing thermal conductivity structure can effectively reduce flywheel’s temperature. The authors also investigate the heat dissipation mechanism of different flywheel clearance structures.