Solid Particle Resuspension Model Development for the GASFLOW Code

Abstract

Safety reports have shown that tons of solid particles would be generated as dusts in the operation of ITER facility. The dust particles include carbon, beryllium and tungsten with diameters ranging from a few to a few hundreds microns. The particles deposit downwards and mostly accumulated on the surfaces of the diverter on the bottom side of the vacuum vessel (VV). In accident scenarios, e.g., loss of vacuum accident (LOVA), the potentially combustible dust particles can be suspended by the air ingress and entrained into the whole volume of the VV, and impose a risk of dust explosions in case of unintentionally ignition to the whole ITER facility. Therefore the mechanism of particle resuspension was investigated theoretically in the work. A force balance approach and numerical fittings have been utilized to develop a semiempirical particle resuspension model based on a group of particle resuspension experimental data. The model has been applied into a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics code, GASFLOW. The model validation has been done by comparison of the numerical predictions about particle resuspension rates in given incoming flows against the corresponding experimental data. The comparisons have proved the validity of the developed model about particle resuspension.