• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.74-84
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• 2015

If a transient occurs in a nuclear power plant (NPP), operators will try to protect the NPP by estimating the kind of abnormality and mitigating it based on recommended procedures. Similarly, operators take actions based on severe accident management guidelines when there is the possibility of a severe accident occurrence in an NPP. In any such situation, information about the occurrence time of severe accident-related events can be very important to operators to set up severe accident management strategies. Therefore, support systems that can quickly provide this kind of information will be very useful when operators try to manage severe accidents. In this research, the occurrence times of several events that could happen during a severe accident were predicted using support vector machines with short time variations of plant status variables inputs. For the preliminary step, the break location and size of a loss of coolant accident (LOCA) were identified. Training and testing data sets were obtained using the MAAP5 code. The results show that the proposed algorithm can correctly classify the break location of the LOCA and can estimate the break size of the LOCA very accurately. In addition, the occurrence times of severe accident major events were predicted under various severe accident paths, with reasonable error. With these results, it is expected that it will be possible to apply the proposed algorithm to real NPPs because the algorithm uses only the early phase data after the reactor SCRAM, which can be obtained accurately for accident simulations.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.21-31
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• 2017

In the present study, theoretical and numerical analyses have been carried out to investigate the detailed flow characteristics during the mode transition. The theoretical analysis rearranged the knowledge of gasdynamics and the previous studies, and the numerical analysis has conducted to solve the 2D unsteady compressible Navier-Stokes equations with a fully implicit finite volume scheme. To validate the numerical analysis, the experiment was compared with it. The total temperature at the inlet of isolator and the hydrogen fuel equivalent ratio were changed to investigate their effects on the mode transition phenomenon. As the results, the numerical analysis reproduced well the experiment qualitatively, the increment in the hydrogen fuel equivalent ratio induced the scram-mode to ram-mode transition which is discontinuous with a non-allowable region, and the variation in the total temperature changed the boundary of the mode transition.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.855-864
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• 2017

The control rod assembly controls reactor power by adjusting its position during normal operation and shuts down chain reactions by its free drop under scram conditions. Therefore, the drop performance of the control rod assembly is important for the safety of a nuclear reactor. In this study, the drop performance of the conceptually designed control rod assembly for the prototype generation IV sodium-cooled fast reactor that is being developed at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute as a next-generation nuclear reactor was experimentally investigated. For the performance test, the test facility and test procedure were established first, and several free drop performance tests of the control rod assembly under different flow rate conditions were then carried out. Moreover, performance tests under several types and magnitudes of seismic loading conditions were also conducted to investigate the effects of seismic loading on the drop performance of the control rod assembly. The drop time of the conceptually designed control rod assembly for 0% of the tentatively designed flow rate was measured to be 1.527 seconds, and this agrees well with the analytically calculated drop time. It was also observed that the effect of seismic loading on the drop time was not significant.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.49 no.11
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• pp.909-917
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• 2021

In this work, a one-dimensional combustor solver was constructed for the scramjet control m odel. The governing equations for fluid flow, Arrhenius based combustion kinetics, and the inje ction model were implemented into the solver. In order to validate the solver, the zero-dimensi onal ignition delay problem and one-dimensional scramjet combustion problem were considered and showed that the solver successfully reproduced the results from the literature. Subsequentl y, a ramjet analysis algorithm under subsonic speed conditions was constructed, and a study o n the inlet Mach number of the combustor was carried out through the thermal choking locatio ns at ram conditions. In such conditions, a model for precombustion shock train analysis was i mplemented, and the algorithm for transition section analysis was introduced. In addition, in or der to determine the appropriateness of the ram mode analysis in the code, the occurrence of a n unstart was studied through the length of the pseudo-shock in the isolator. A performance a nalysis study was carried out according to the geometry of the combustor.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.8
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• pp.3017-3029
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• 2023

In the late in-vessel phase of a nuclear reactor severe accident, the internal heat transfer and crust evolution during the debris bed melting process have important effects on the thermal load distribution along the vessel wall, and further affect the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) failure mode and the state of melt during leakage. This study coupled the phase change model and large eddy simulation to investigate the variations of the temperature, melt liquid fraction, crust and heat flux distributions during the debris bed melting process in the hypothetical severe accident of HPR1000. The results indicated that the heat flow towards the vessel wall and upper surface were similar at the beginning stage of debris melting, but the upward heat flow increased significantly as the development of the molten pool. The maximum heat flux towards the vessel wall reached 0.4 MW/m². The thickness of lower crust decreased as the debris melting. It was much thicker at the bottom region with the azimuthal angle below 20° and decreased rapidly at the azimuthal angle around 20-50°. The maximum and minimum thicknesses were 2 and 90 mm, respectively. By contrast, the distribution of upper crust was uniform and reached stable state much earlier than the lower crust, with the thickness of about 10 mm. Moreover, the sensitivity analysis of initial condition indicated that as the decrease of time interval from reactor scram to debris bed dried-out, the maximum debris temperature and melt fraction became larger, the lower crust thickness became thinner, but the upper crust had no significant change. The sensitivity analysis of in-vessel retention (IVR) strategies indicated that the passive and active external reactor vessel cooling (ERVC) had little effect on the internal heat transfer and crust evolution. In the case not considering the internal reactor vessel cooling (IRVC), the upper crust was not obvious.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2004.03a
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• pp.48-54
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• 2004

The effects of injector spacing s and injector diameter d on mixing are numerically investigated in supersonic combustor with perpendicular injection behind a backward-facing step. Simulations are reported for airstream Mach number of 2.4. Parameters are changed on following 4 cases to investigate the effects of injector configuration on mixing efficiency $\eta_m$. In the case of varying d or s, dynamic pressure ratio $Rq(=(pu^2)_j/(pu^2)_a)$ is also varied to keep bulk equivalence ratio $\Phi({\oe})Rq.d^2/s)$ constant. (l) Injector spacing s is varied at constant $\Phi$=0.5, 1, 2 for injector diameter d=6mm. In the case of $\Phi$=1, $\eta_m$ has its maximum value at s=24mm. The reason is that increase of $\eta_m$. , by widening spacing at Rq=constant competes with decrease of $\eta_m$ by increasing Rq at s=constant. When spacing is narrow, the flow field of vicinity of injector becomes two-dimensional because adjacent jets interferes each other. By widening spacing, air is easily entrained by three-dimensional effect. This mechanism also appears in the case of $\Phi$=0.5, 2 for d=6mm, and $\eta_m$. reaches its maximum value at s=24mm for $\Phi$=0.5 and at s=42mm for $\Phi$=2. (2) In the case of injector diameter d varied at $\Phi$=1 for s=30mm, $\eta_m$. has its maximum value at d=3mm. The reason is that decrease of $\eta_m$ by increasing injector diameter competes with increase of $\eta_m$ by decreasing Rq at d=constant.(3) In the case of s varied at $\Phi$=0.5, 1,2 for d=3mm, the injector spacing at which mixing efficiency has its maximum value is s= 18mm for $\Phi$=0.5, s=24mm for $\Phi$=1, s=24mm for $\Phi$=2. Therefore it is found that d=3mm and s=24mm can be optimum configuration over a range of $\Phi$=0.5~2.(4) The effect of h on the optimum spacing is investigated. s is varied for d=6mm at step height h=4, 6, 8mm. The simulation results do not show significant change on the step height.