• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.249-257
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• 2010

In this paper, a three-dimensional hydrogen absorption model is developed to precisely study hydrogen absorption reaction and resultant heat and mass transport phenomena in metal hydride hydrogen storage vessels. The 3D model is first experimentally validated against the temperature evolution data available in the literature. In addition to model validation, the detailed simulation results shows that at the initial absorption stage, the vessel temperature and H/M ratio distributions are uniform throughout the entire vessel, indicating that the hydrogen absorption is so efficient during the early hydriding process and thus local cooling effect is not influential. On the other hand, nonuniform distributions are predicted at the latter absorption stage, which is mainly due to different degrees of cooling between the vessel wall and core regions. This numerical study provides the fundamental understanding of detailed heat and mass transfer phenomena during hydrogen absorption process and further indicates that efficient design of storage vessel and cooling system is critical to achieve fast hydrogen charging and high hydrogen storage efficiency.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.284-291
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• 1997

A hydrogen liquefaction equipment by direct cooling has been designed and built at KIST. Cool-down characteristics and liquefaction performance of the equipment have been investigated. The hydrogen liquefaction equipment consists of a GM refrigerator, a liquefaction velssel, a radiation shield and a cryostat. It is found that the hydrogen starts to be liquefied in the liquefaction vessel after 40~50 minutes of cool-down from the gas state of 270K. The effect of natural convection phenomena of charged gas in liquefaction vessel on the cool-down characteristics is evaluated by comparing with those in vacuum of liquefaction vessel. It is seen that the cool-down time of a liquefaction vessel is substantially increased in vacuum environment of liquefaction vessel. The experiments have been performed for 1~5 atm of hydrogen pressure to investigate the influence of hydrogen pressure on the liquefaction rate and figure of merit(FOM). It is found that both liquefaction rate and FOM are increased as the charged hydrogen pressure is increased.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.26-31
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• 2004

In order to propose the optimum welding condition for field application, the effects of welding heat input and cooling rate at PWHT on the mechanical properties were investigated. Submerged arc welding of 1.25Cr-0.5Mo steel for pressure vessel was conducted at welding heat inputs of 15.2kJ/cm, 30.9kJ/cm, and 44.8kJ/cm, and cooling rates of 184$^{\circ}C$/hr, 55$^{\circ}C$/hr, and 2$0^{\circ}C$/hr at PWHT. From the test results, as the welding heat input increase up to 30.9kJ/cm, the changes of microstructure and impact toughness were small. At the heat input of 44.8kJ/cm, however, toughness decreased obviously due to the coarsening of coarse-grained HAZ and formation of ferrite at bainite grainboundary of weld metal. On the other hand, cooling rates at PWHT did not effect on the changes in microstructure and mechanical properties. Even though tensile strength and impact toughness at all welding conditions of this study were above the minimum specification requirement, it was confirmed that heat input of 30.9kJ/cm was the optimum welding condition to improve welding performance by higher heat input.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.767-790
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• 2013

MAAP4 is a computer code that can simulate the response of a light water reactor power plant during severe accident sequences, including actions taken as part of accident management. The code quantitatively predicts the evolution of a severe accident starting from full power conditions given a set of system faults and initiating events through events such as core melt, reactor vessel failure, and containment failure. Furthermore, models are included in the code to represent the actions that could mitigate the accident by in-vessel cooling, external cooling of the reactor pressure vessel, or cooling the debris in containment. A key element tied to using a code like MAAP4 is an uncertainty analysis. The purpose of this paper is to present a MAAP4 based analysis to examine the sensitivity of a key parameter, in this case hydrogen production, to a set of model parameters that are related to a Level 2 PRA analysis. The Level 2 analysis examines those sequences that result in core melting and subsequent reactor pressure vessel failure and its impact on the containment. This paper identifies individual contributors and MAAP4 model parameters that statistically influence hydrogen production. Hydrogen generation was chosen because of its direct relationship to oxidation. With greater oxidation, more heat is added to the core region and relocation (core slump) should occur faster. This, in theory, would lead to shorter failure times and subsequent "hotter" debris pool on the containment floor.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Heat Treatment
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.15-23
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• 2016

The effects of austenitizing temperature and cooling rate on precipitation behavior and tensile properties were investigated in an Mn-Mo-Nb-V pressure vessel steel. During austenitizing, it was shown that the austenite coarsening was somewhat suppressed by undissolved NbC. After cooling from austenitizing, the microstructure of all the steels mainly consisted of upper bainite. However, the steel comprised a little lower bainite and martensite in the case of aqua oil quenching from $1000^{\circ}C$, which would be due to increased hardenability by partly dissolved Nb and comparatively large austenite grains. The average size of NbC in austenite at higher temperature was analyzed to be smaller than that at lower temperature because of the more dissolution. It was found that the NbC did not grow much during fast cooling from austenitizing. Meanwhile, the NbC grew much during slow cooling, probably due to wide temperature range of cooling and sufficiently long time for NbC to grow. It was conjectured the V precipitates newly formed and/or grew during cooling from austenitizing and during tempering. On the other hand, the formation of NbC was almost completed before tempering and little more precipitated during tempering. Among the tempered steels, the steel which was fast cooled from $1000^{\circ}C$ showed the highest tensile strength, which seemed to come from the microstructure of fine upper bainite and some low temperature phases as well as the comparatively fine NbC precipitates.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.29 no.8
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• pp.511-518
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• 2019

In this study, the effect of carbon equivalent and cooling rate on microstructure and hardness of A516 steels for pressure vessel is investigated. Six kinds of specimens are fabricated by varying carbon equivalent and cooling rate, and their microstructures and hardness levels are analyzed. Specimens with low carbon equivalent consist of ferrite and pearlite. As the cooling rate increases, the size of pearlite decreases slightly. The specimens with high carbon equivalent and rapid cooling rates of 10 and $20^{\circ}C/s$ consist of not only ferrite and pearlite but also bainite structure, such as granular bainite, acicular ferrite, and bainite ferrite. As the cooling rate increases, the volume fractions of bainite structure increase and the effective grain size decreases. The effective grain sizes of granular bainite, acicular ferrite, and bainitic ferrite are ~20, ~5, and ${\sim}10{{\mu}m$, respectively. In the specimens with bainite structure, the volume fractions of acicular ferrite and bainitic ferrite, with small effective grains, increase as cooling rate increases, and so the hardness increases significantly.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.1897-1902
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• 2003

An 1/21.6 scaled experimental facility was prepared utilizing the results of a scaling analysis to simulate the APRI400 reactor and insulation system. The behaviors of the boiling-induced two-phase natural circulation flow in the insulation gap were observed, and the liquid mass flow rates driven by natural circulation loop were measured by varying the wall heat flux, upper exit slot area and configuration. And non-heating experiments have also been performed and discussed to certify the hydraulic similarity of the heating experiments by injecting air equivalent to the steam generated in the heating experimental condition.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.147-152
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• 2017

The external reactor vessel cooling (ERVC) is well known strategy to mitigate a severe accident at which nuclear fuel inside the reactor vessel is molten. In order to compare the heat removal capacity of ERVC between the nuclear reactor designs quantitatively, numerical method is often used. However, the study for ERVC using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is still quite scarce. As a validation study on the numerical prediction for ERVC using CFD, the subcooled boiling flow and natural circulation of coolant at the ULPU-V experiment was simulated. The commercially available CFD software ANSYS-CFX was used. Shear stress transport (SST) model and RPI model were used for turbulence closure and wall-boiling, respectively. The averaged flow velocities in the downcomer and the baffle entry under the reactor vessel lower plenum are in good agreement with the available experimental data and recent computational results. Steam generated from the heated wall condenses rapidly and coolant flows maintains single-phase flow until coolant boils again by flashing process due to the decrease of saturation temperature induced by higher elevation. Hence, the flow rate of coolant natural circulation does not vary significantly with the change of heat flux applied at the reactor vessel, which is also consistent with the previous literatures.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.351-361
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• 2015

External reactor vessel cooling (ERVC) for in-vessel retention (IVR) has been considered one of the most useful strategies to mitigate severe accidents. However, reliability of this common idea is weakened because many studies were focused on critical heat flux whereas there were diverse uncertainties in structural behaviors as well as thermal-hydraulic phenomena. In the present study, several key factors related to molten corium behaviors and thermal characteristics were examined under multi-layered corium formation conditions. Thereafter, systematic finite element analyses and subsequent damage evaluation with varying parameters were performed on a representative reactor pressure vessel (RPV) to figure out the possibility of high temperature induced failures. From the sensitivity analyses, it was proven that the reactor cavity should be flooded up to the top of the metal layer at least for successful accomplishment of the IVR-ERVC strategy. The thermal flux due to corium formation and the relocation time were also identified as crucial parameters. Moreover, three-layered corium formation conditions led to higher maximum von Mises stress values and consequently shorter creep rupture times as well as higher damage factors of the RPV than those obtained from two-layered conditions.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.191-208
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• 2002

A comparative assessment study for a generation of the pressure-temperature (P-T) limit curve of a reactor vessel is performed in accordance with ASME code. Using cooling or heating rate and vessel material properties, stress distribution is obtained to calculate stress intensity factors, which are compared with the material fracture toughness to determine the relations between operating pressure and temperature during reactor cool-down and heat-up. P-T limit curves are analyzed with respect to defect orientation, clad thickness, toughness curve, cooling or heating rate and neutron fluence. The resulting P-T curves are compared each other.