Experimental characterization of pressure and friction factor in an interior subchannel of a 61-pin wire-wrapped rod bundle with a porous blockage

Abstract

Comprehending and counteracting accident conditions presented by impedances of flow in diminutive subchannels of a Liquid Metal Fast Reactor (LMFR) hexagonal rod bundle are imperative toward their development and safety. Scarce experimental research currently exists in the literature to characterize the pressure and friction factor for partial blockages in LMFR assemblies. Experimental pressure measurements were conducted in a 61-pin prototypical LMFR fuel assembly using specialized instrumented wire-wrapped rods with a three-dimensional printed porous blockage installed. The pressure drop was measured for one helical pitch at four distinct interior subchannel locations: two in the blocked subchannel and two unblocked adjacent locations (near-center and near-wall of the assembly). A wide range of Reynolds numbers between 140 and 24 000 were studied to evaluate the blocked subchannel friction factor and to determine the flow regime boundaries for laminar-to-transition and transition-to-turbulent flows. Power spectral density analysis of the pressure fluctuations for three distinct locations (one upstream and two downstream of the porous blockage) revealed the mechanisms of coherent structure formations and transport, and dominant location-dependent Strouhal numbers. One-dimensional continuous wavelet transforms of the pressure fluctuations demarcated temporal instances of flow events with their frequency content. Temporal cross correlation quantified the temporal delay between the blocked subchannel pressure fluctuations in the blockage vicinity. The presented research provides first-of-its-kind datasets and fluid physics based-analyses for the interior LMFR subchannel in the presence of a porous blockage and provides a benchmark for the validation of computational flow models and predictive correlations for the safety enhancement of LMFR rod bundles.