2006 International RERTR Meeting

Abstracts and Available Papers Presented at the Meeting

Analyses of Flow Excursion Experiments Relevant
to Research Reactors: Revisited

A. P. Olson
RERTR Program, Nuclear Engineering Division, Argonne National Laboratory
9700 S. Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439, USA

ABSTRACT

The margin to flow instability is an important measure for safe operation of research reactors. The PLTEMP/ANL V3.1 code now includes two correlations for predicting onset of excursive-flow instability that are based on flow instability experiments by Whittle and Forgan, and by M. Siman-Tov et al. The Siman-Tov test data, from the ANS Thermal-Hydraulic Test Loop at ORNL, cover power and flow conditions appropriate to high-powered research reactors. Both groups of experimentalists conducted a broad range of electrically heated single channel experiments over pressure, heat flux, coolant velocity, inlet temperature, and channel geometry relevant to research reactor conversion studies. This paper reports on computer simulation of many of these experiments in order to validate the methods used to predict onset of flow instability in the PLTEMP/ANL V3.1 code. The Whittle and Forgan data is statistically analyzed to find an appropriate bound for the flow instability parameter, η.

 

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