• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.202-210
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• 2006

In the nuclear power plant, emergency core coolant system (ECCS) is furnished at reactor coolant system (RCS) in order to cool down high temperature water in case of emergency. However, in this coolant system, thermal stratification phenomenon can be occurred due to coolant leaking in the check valve. The thermal stratification produces excessive thormal stresses at the pipe wall so as to yield thermal fatigue crack (TFC) accident. In the present study, when the turbulence penetration occurs in the branch pipe, the maximum temperature differences of fluid at the pipe cross-sections of the T-branch with thermal stratification are examine.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.237-248
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• 2013

Thermal stratification has continuously caused several piping failures in nuclear power plants since the early 1980s. However, this critical thermal effect was not considered when the old nuclear power plants were designed. Therefore, it is urgent to evaluate this unexpected thermal effect on the structural integrity of piping systems. In this paper, the thermal effects of stratified flow in two different safety injection piping systems were investigated by using a coupled CFD-FE method. Since stratified flow is generally generated by turbulent penetration and/or valve leakage, thermal stress analyses as well as CFD analyses were carried out considering these two primary causes. Numerical results show that the most critical factor governing thermal stratification is valve leakage and that temperature distribution significantly changes according to the leakage path. In particular, in-leakage has a high possibility of causing considerable structural problems in RCS piping.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.221-225
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• 2004

Evaluation of turbulence models is performed for a better prediction of thermal stratification in an upper plenum of a liquid metal reactor by applying them to the experiment conducted at JNC. The turbulence models tested in the present study are the two-layer model, the $\kappa-\omega$ model, the v2-f model and the low-Reynolds number differential stress-flux model. When the algebraic flux model or differential flux model are used for treating the turbulent heat flux, there exist little differences between turbulence models in predicting the temporal variation of temperature. However, the v2-f model and the low-Reynolds number differential stress-flux model better predict the steep gradient o( temperature at the interface of thermal stratification, and only the v2-f model predicts properly the oscillation of temperature. The LES Is needed for a better prediction of the amplitude and frequency of the temperature fluctuation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.239-250
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• 2008

If there is a water flow with a range of temperature inside a pipe, the wanner water tends to float on top of the cooler water because it is lighter, resulting in the upper portion of the pipe being hotter than the lower portion. Under these conditions, such thermal stratification can play an important role in the aging of nuclear power plant piping because of the stress caused by the temperature difference and the cyclic temperature changes. This stress can limit the lifetime of the piping, even leading to penetrating cracks. Investigated in this study is the effect of thermal stratification on the structural integrity of the pressurizer surge line, which is reported to be one of the pipes most severely affected. Finite element models of the surge line are developed using several element types available in a general purpose structural analysis program and stress analyses are performed to determine the response characteristics for the various types of top-to-bottom temperature differentials due to thermal stratification. Fatigue analyses are also performed and an allowable environmental correction factor is suggested.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.18 no.7
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• pp.603-611
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• 2006

A variety of schemes were sought for a mitigation of thermal stratification phenomenon in the branch piping of domestic nuclear power plant. Several mechanisms of thermal stratification occurrence were introduced in this paper. A number of factors were selected to find out the schemes for thermal stratification mitigation and the computational analysis were performed. The length of vertical branch piping, the diameter, the radius of curvature of the elbow, the direction of connection between main piping and branch piping, the slope of branch piping, the leakage flow rate, the installation of additional valve, the change of the 1st valve position and another branch piping connected with branch piping were mentioned as factors in this paper.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.119-128
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• 1997

A method to mitigate the thermal stratification flow of a horizontal pipe line is proposed by heating external bottom of the pipe with electrical heat tracing. Unsteady two dimensional model has been used to numerically investigate an effect of the external heating on the thermal stratification flow. The dimensionless governing equations are solved by using the control volume formulation and SIMPLE algorithm. Temperature distribution, streamline profile and Nusselt number distributions are analyzed under heating conditions. The numerical results of this study show that the maximum dimensionless temperature difference between hot and cold sections of the inner wall of pipe is 0.424 at dimensionless time of 1,500 and the thermal stratification phenomenon disappears at about dimensionless time of 9,000.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.18 no.9
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• pp.2454-2462
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• 1994

The effects of thermal stratification on the flow of a stratified fluid past a heated circular cylinder were examined in a wind tunnel. Turbulent intensities, rms values of temperature and turbulent convective heat flux distributions in the heated cylinder wake with and without thermal stratification were measured by using a hot-wire and cold-wire combination probe. A phase averaging method was also used to estimated coherent motion in the near wake. It is found that the vertical turbulent motion in the stably stratified flow case dissipates faster than that of the neutral case, i.e., vertical growth of vortical structure is suppressed under the strongly stratified condition. The coherent motion of temperature makes a large contribution like velocity coherent motion. However, the coherent motions of temperature fluctuation become very different with the change of experimental conditions, though the velocity coherent motions are quite similar in all experimental conditions.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.41-48
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• 2012

A numerical analysis of thermal stratification in the upper plenum of the MONJU fast breeder reactor was performed. Calculations were performed for a 1/6 simplified model of the MONJU reactor using the commercial code, CFX-13. To better resolve the geometrically complex upper core structure of the MONJU reactor, the porous media approach was adopted for the simulation. First, a steady state solution was obtained and the transient solutions were then obtained for the turbine trip test conducted in December 1995. The time dependent inlet conditions for the mass flow rate and temperature were provided by JAEA. Good agreement with the experimental data was observed for steady state solution. The numerical solution of the transient analysis shows the formation of thermal stratification within the upper plenum of the reactor vessel during the turbine trip test. The temporal variations of temperature were predicted accurately by the present method in the initial rapid coastdown period (~300 seconds). However, transient numerical solutions show a faster thermal mixing than that observed in the experiment after the initial coastdown period. A nearly homogenization of the temperature field in the upper plenum is predicted after about 900 seconds, which is a much shorter-term thermal stratification than the experimental data indicates. This discrepancy is due to the shortcoming of the turbulence models available in the CFX-13 code for a natural convection flow with thermal stratification.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.680-688
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• 1996

In this paper, the unsteady state calculational model is proposed for the thermal stratification analysis in the feedwater line of the PWR plant. By defining dimensionless parameters in the two-dimensional polar coordinate system and applying SIMPLE algorithm, the temperature and flow profiles due to the thermal stratification are obtained. Base on the fact that the most significant condition occurs when the fluid temperature difference between the piping ends reaches as high as 166.deg. C, the present result shows that max. Dimensionless temperature difference of 0.6 (about l00.deg. C) obtained between hot and cold sections of pipe wall at dimensionless time 47.0.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2001.11b
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• pp.729-734
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• 2001

Thermal stratification due to turbulence penetration and in-leakage of valve cause the large thermal stress, which lead to fatigue crack of the piping system of nuclear power plant. So it is needed that numerical and experimental study for the phenomenon is conducted because there have not yet been sufficient study for the relationship between turbulence penetration and thermal stratification. Therefore numerical analysis is done here and respected to give a fundamental method of the approach to the phenomenon.