Experimental and numerical investigation on cross flow in the PMR200 core

Abstract

Papers presented to the 11th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, South Africa, 20-23 July 2015.

The Prismatic Modular Reactor (PMR) is one of the major Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR) concepts, which consists of hexagonal prismatic fuel blocks and reflector blocks made of nuclear grade graphite. However, the shape of graphite blocks could be easily changed by neutron damage during the reactor operation and the shape change can make the gaps between the blocks inducing bypass flow. Two types of gap shape should be considered. The vertical gap and horizontal gap are called bypass gap and cross gap, respectively. The cross gap complicates flow field in reactor core by connecting coolant channel and bypass gap and it could lead to loss of effective coolant flow in fuel blocks. In this paper, cross flow experimental facility was constructed to investigate the cross flow phenomena in the core of the VHTR and the experiment was carried out under varying flow rates and gap sizes. The results of the experiments were compared with CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) analysis results. In order to apply the CFD code to the cross flow phenomena, the prediction capability of the CFD code was verified. Good agreement between experimental results and CFD predictions was observed and the characteristics of the cross flow was discussed in detail.