An Experimental and Numerical Study of Pressure Drop and Hydraulic Behavior in Scaled-Down Fuel Bundle

Abstract

This study presents a scaled-down single fuel assembly experiment to simulate the fuel in the spent fuel pool (SFP). From experiment results, this study obtained the relationship among pressure drop and velocity, the viscous resistance and inertial resistance factor. In computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, the large number of fuel rod bundles is approximated with porous medium technique that imposes similar flow resistance to the motion of the fluid. Difference of the pressure drop between numerical and experimental results is within acceptable deviation.