The Cross-Flow Mixing Analysis of Quasi-Static Pebble Flow in Pebble Bed Reactor

Abstract

In the pebble bed reactor, large number of fuel pebbles’ movement law and moving state can affect the reactor’s design, operation and safety directly. Therefore the pebble flow, which is based on the theory of particle streaming, is one of the most important research subjects of the pebble bed reactor engineering. The in-core pebble flow is a very slow particle flow (or called quasi-static particle flow), which is very different from the usual particle motion. How to accurately describe the characteristics of in-core pebble flow is a central issue for this subject. Due to the presence of random flow, the cross-mixing phenomenon will occur inevitably. In the present paper, the mixing phenomenon of pebble flow is generalized on the basis of experiment results. The pebble flow cross-mixing probability serves as the parameter which describes both the regularity and the randomness of pebble flow. The results are provided in the form of diagrammatic presentation.