Study on two-phase flow instability of parallel helical tubes in steam generator of small modular reactors

Abstract

The flow instability phenomenon within parallel helical tubes is experimentally studied. The oscillation characteristics of wall temperature are comprehensively discussed. In the experiment, the pressure of the test section is in the range of 2.7–6.0 MPa, the mass flux is in the range of 100–300 kg/m2s, the degree of inlet subcooling is in the range of 10–75 °C, and the inlet throttling is in the range of 82–328. This study reveals different effects of inlet subcooling. Specifically, increasing the inlet subcooling under high mass flux enhances the stability of parallel helical tubes. However, increasing the inlet subcooling under low mass flux and low subcooling weakens the stability. The oscillation period to mixture transit time ratio is small at high inlet subcooling and increases with decreasing subcooling. Furthermore, this study shows that the onset of wall temperature oscillation is closely related to the dryout phenomenon, and that the oscillation amplitude increases with increasing local quality. Finally, this study demonstrates that the flow instability can be accurately predicted using time-domain method. The simulation results show satisfactory accuracy, with the prediction errors of ± 15% for the instability threshold and oscillation period, and ± 20% for the wall temperature oscillation amplitude.