• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제54권2호
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• pp.589-600
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• 2022

Investigations on the molten-pool sloshing behavior are of essential value for improving nuclear safety evaluation of Core Disruptive Accidents (CDA) that would be possibly encountered for Sodium-cooled Fast Reactors (SFR). This paper is aimed at synthesizing the knowledge from our recent studies on molten-pool sloshing behavior with solid particles conducted at the Sun Yat-sen University. To better visualize and clarify the mechanism and characteristics of sloshing induced by local Fuel-Coolant Interaction (FCI), experiments were performed with various parameters by injecting nitrogen gas into a 2-dimensional liquid pool with accumulated solid particles. It was confirmed that under different particle-bed conditions, three representative flow regimes (i.e. the bubble-impulsion dominant, transitional and bed-inertia dominant regimes) are identifiable. Aimed at predicting the regime transitions during sloshing process, a predictive empirical model along with a regime map was proposed on the basis of experiments using single-sized spherical solid particles, and then was extended for covering more complex particle conditions (e.g. non-spherical, mixed-sized and mixed-density spherical particle conditions). To obtain more comprehensive understandings and verify the applicability and reliability of the predictive model under more realistic conditions (e.g. large-scale 3-dimensional condition), further experimental and modeling studies are also being prepared under other more complicated actual conditions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제52권5호
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• pp.925-936
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• 2020

To ascertain the characteristics of pool sloshing behavior that might be encountered during a core disruptive accident of sodium-cooled fast reactors, in our earlier work several series of experiments were conducted under various scenarios including the condition with mono-sized solid particles. It is found that under the particle-bed condition, three typical flow regimes (namely the bubble-impulsion dominant regime, the transitional regime and the bed-inertia dominant regime) could be identified and a flow-regime model (base model) has been even successfully established to estimate the regime transition. In this study, aimed to further understand this behavior at more realistic particle-bed conditions, a series of simulated experiments is newly carried out using mixed-size particles. Through analyses, it is verified that for present scenario, by applying the area mean diameter, our previously-developed base model can provide the most appropriate predictive results among the various effective diameters. To predict the regime transition with a form of extension scheme, a correction factor which is based on the volume-mean diameter and the degree of convergence in particle-size distribution is suggested and validated. The conducted analyses in this work also indicate that under certain conditions, the potential separation between different particle components might exist during the sloshing process.