• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제47권4호
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• pp.389-397
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• 2015

The effects of mixing vanes (MVs) attached to a grid spacer on the characteristics of air-water annular flows were experimentally investigated. To know the effects, a grid spacer with or without MV was inserted in a vertical circular pipe of 16-mm internal diameter. For three cases (i.e., no spacer, spacer without MV, and spacer with MV), the liquid film thickness, liquid entrainment fraction, and deposition rate were measured by the constant current method, single liquid film extraction method, and double liquid film extraction method, respectively. The MVs significantly promote the re-deposition of liquid droplets in the gas core flow into the liquid film on the channel walls. The deposition mass transfer coefficient is three times higher for the spacer with MV than for the spacer without MV, even for cases 0.3-m downstream from the spacer. The liquid film thickness becomes thicker upstream and downstream for the spacer with MV, compared with the thickness for the spacer without MV and for the case with no spacer.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제49권2호
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• pp.426-433
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• 2017

This paper describes the development process, the innovative techniques used and insights gained from the latest integrated, full scope, multistate Level 2 PSA analysis conducted at the Leibstadt Nuclear Power Plant (KKL), Switzerland. KKL is a modern single-unit General Electric Boiling Water Reactor (BWR/6) with Mark III Containment, and a power output of $3600MW_{th}/1200MW_e$, the highest among the five operating reactors in Switzerland. A Level 2 Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) analyses accident phenomena in nuclear power plants, identifies ways in which radioactive releases from plants can occur and estimates release pathways, magnitude and frequency. This paper attempts to give an overview of the advanced modeling techniques that have been developed and implemented for the recent KKL Level 2 PSA update, with the aim of systematizing the analysis and modeling processes, as well as complying with the relatively prescriptive Swiss requirements for PSA. The analysis provides significant insights into the absolute and relative importances of risk contributors and accident prevention and mitigation measures. Thanks to several newly developed techniques and an integrated approach, the KKL Level 2 PSA report exhibits a high degree of reviewability and maintainability, and transparently highlights the most important risk contributors to Large Early Release Frequency (LERF) with respect to initiating events, components, operator actions or seismic component failure probabilities (fragilities).

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제49권2호
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• pp.286-294
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• 2017

The events at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in March 2011 point out, among other matters, that concurrent accidents at multiple units of a site can occur in reality. Although site risk has been deterministically considered to some extent in nuclear power plant siting and design, potential occurrence of multi-unit accident sequences at a site was not investigated in sufficient detail thus far in the nuclear power community. Therefore, there is considerable worldwide interest and research effort directed toward multi-unit site risk assessment, especially in the countries with high-density nuclear-power-plant sites such as Korea. As the technique of probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) has been successfully applied to evaluate the risk associated with operation of nuclear power plants in the past several decades, the PSA having primarily focused on single-unit risks is now being extended to the multi-unit PSA. In this paper we first characterize the site risk with explicit consideration of the risk associated with spent fuel pools as well as the reactor risks. The status of multi-unit risk assessment is discussed next, followed by a description of the emerging issues relevant to the multi-unit risk evaluation from a practical standpoint.

• 산업기술연구
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• 제26권B호
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• pp.173-181
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• 2006

We analyzed systematically particle growth in the pulsed $SiH_4$ plasmas by a numerical method and investigated the effects of pulse modulations (pulse frequencies, duty ratios) on the particle growth. We considered effects of particle charging on the particle growth by coagulation during plasma-on. During plasma-on ($t_{on}$), the particle size distribution in plasma reactor becomes bimodal (small sized and large sized particles groups). During plasma-off ($t_{off}$), there is a single mode of large sized particles which is widely dispersed in the particle size distribution. During plasma on, the large sized particles grows more quickly by fast coagulation between small and large sized particles than during plasma-off. As the pulse frequency decreases, or as the duty ratio increases, $t_{on}$ increases and the large sized particles grow faster. On the basis of these results, the pulsed plasma process can be a good method to suppress efficiently the generation and growth of particles in $SiH_4$ PCVD process. This systematical analysis can be applied to design a pulsed plasma process for the preparation of high quality thin films.

• 대한기계학회논문집B
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• 제20권4호
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• pp.1472-1480
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• 1996

The phenomena of drag reduction using small quantities of a linear macromolecules has attracted the attention of experimental investigations. It is well known that drag reduction in single phase liquid flow is affected by polymer materials, molecular weight, polymer concentration, pipe diameter and flow velocity. But the research on drag reduction in two phase flow has not intensively investigated. Drag reduction can be applied to phase change system such as chemical reactor, pool and boiling flow, and to flow with cavitation which occurs pump impellers. The purpose of the present work is to evaluate the drag reduction by measuring pressure drop, mean liquid velocity, and turbulent intensity and determine the effects of polymer additives on drag reduction in horizontal two phase flow. Experimental results show higher drag reduction using co-polymer comparing with using polyacrylamide. Mean liquid velocities increase as adding more polymer, and turbulent intensities decrease as the distance for the wall in inversed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제48권4호
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• pp.915-924
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• 2016

After a severe accident to the nuclear reactor, the in-vessel retention strategy is a key way to prevent the leakage of radioactive material. Nanofluid is a steady suspension used to improve heat-transfer characteristics of working fluids, formed by adding solid particles with diameters below 100nm to the base fluids, and its thermal physical properties and heat-transfer characteristics are much different from the conventional working fluids. Thus, nanofluids with appropriate nanoparticle type and volume concentration can enhance the heat-transfer process. In this study, the moving particle semi-implicit method-meshless advection using flow-directional local grid method is used to simulate the bubble growth, departure, and sliding on the downward-facing heating surface in pure water and nanofluid (1.0 vol.% $Al_2O_3/H_2O$) flow boiling processes; additionally, the bubble critical departure angle and sliding characteristics and their influence are also investigated. The results indicate that the bubble in nanofluid departs from the heating surface more easily and the critical departure inclined angle of nanofluid is greater than that of pure water. In addition, the influence of nanofluid on bubble sliding is not significant compared with pure water.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제42권3호
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• pp.319-328
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• 2010

Bonded tendons have been used in reactor buildings at some operating nuclear power plants in Korea. Assessing prestress force on these bonded tendons has become an important pending problem in efforts to assure continued operation beyond their design life. The System Identification (SI) technique was thus developed to improve upon the existing indirect assessment technique for bonded tendons. As a first step, this study analyzed the sensitivity of the key parameters to prestress force, and then determined the optimal parameters for the SI technique. A total of six scaled post-tensioned concrete beams with bonded tendons were manufactured. In order to investigate the correlation of the natural frequency and the displacement to prestress force, an impact test, a Single Input Multiple Output (SIMO) sine sweep test, and a bending test using an optical fiber sensor and compact displacement transducer were carried out. These tests found that both the natural frequency and the displacement show a good correlation with prestress force and that both parameters are available for the SI technique to predict prestress force. However, displacements by the optical fiber sensor and compact displacement transducer were shown to be more sensitive than the natural frequency to prestress force. Such displacements are more useful than the natural frequency as an input parameter for the SI technique.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제52권11호
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• pp.2422-2430
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• 2020

In order to improve calculational efficiency of the CAPP code in the analysis of the hexagonal reactor core, we have tried to implement a refined AFEN method with transverse gradient basis functions and interface flux moments in the hexagonal geometry. The numerical scheme for the refined AFEN method adopted here is the response matrix method that uses the interface partial currents as nodal unknowns instead of the interface fluxes used in the original AFEN method. Since the response matrix method is single-node based, it has good properties such as good calculational efficiency and parallel computing affinity. Because a refined AFEN method equivalent nonlinear FDM response matrix method tried first could not provide a numerically stable solution, a direct formulation of the refined AFEN response matrix were developed. To show the numerical performance of this response matrix method against the original AFEN method, the numerical error analyses were performed for several benchmark problems including the VVER-440 LWR benchmark problem and the MHTGR-350 HTGR benchmark problem. The results showed a more than three times speedup in computing time for the LWR and HTGR benchmark problems due to good convergence and excellent calculational efficiency of the refined AFEN response matrix method.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제33권6호
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• pp.619-625
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• 2001

An axial-flow-induced vibration model was proposed for a rod supported by two translational springs at both ends. For developing the model, a one-mode approximation was made based on the assumption that the first mode was dominant in vibration behavior of the single span rod. The first natural frequency and mode shape functions for the flow-induced vibration, called the FIV model were derived by using Lagrange＇s method. The vibration displacements at reactor conditions were calculated by the proposed model for the spring-supported rod and by the previous model for the simple-supported(55) rod. As a result, the vibration displacement for the spring-supported rod was larger than that of the 55 rod, and the discrepancy between both displacements became much larger as flow velocity increased. The vibration displacement for the spring-supported rod appeared to decrease with the increase of the spring constant. AS flow velocity increased, the increase rate of vibration displacement was calculated to go linearly up, and that of the rod having the short span length was larger than that of the rod having the long span length although the displacement value itself of the long span rod was larger than that of the short one.

• 한국원자력학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국원자력학회 1997년도 추계학술발표회논문집(1)
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• pp.599-604
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• 1997

One of important inconsistencies in the six-equation model predictions has been found to be the force experienced by a single bubble placed in a convergent stream of liquid. Various sets of governing equations yield different amount of forces to hold the bubble stationary in a convergent nozzle. By using the first order potential flow theory, it is found that the six-equation model can not be used to estimate the force experienced by a deformed bubble. The theoretical value of the particle stress of a bubble in a convergent nozzle flow has been found to be a function of the Weber number when bubble distortion is allowed. This force has been calculated by using different sets of governing equations and compared with the theoretical value. It is suggested in this study that the bubble size distribution function can be used to remove the presented inconsistency by relating the interfacial variables with different moments of the bubble size distribution function. This study also shows that the inconsistencies in the thermal-hydraulic governing equation can be removed by mechanistic modeling of the phasic interface.