• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.19-28
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• 2016

Objective of this study is to compare the inherent characteristics of natural convection flow inside the canister of spent fuel dry storage system with different backfill gases by utilizing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. Four working fluids were selected for comparison study. Helium currently used backfill gas for canister, air, nitrogen, and argon are frequently used as coolant in many heat transfer applications. The results indicate that helium has very distinct conductive behavior and show very weak natural convective flow compared to the others. Argon showed the strongest natural convective flow but also the worst coolability. Air and nitrogen showed similar characteristics to each other. However, due to difference in Prandtl number, nitrogen showed more effective natural convective flow. These results suggest that experimental validation for the nitrogen is needed to investigate the potential coolability other than currently commercially used helium.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.95-102
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• 2017

Debris flow is a composition of solid objects of various sizes, suspension and water, which occurs frequently as the results of landslide following heavy rainfall. This often causes extensive damage in the form of socio-economic losses and casualties as witnessed during the incident around Mt. Umyeon, Seoul in 2011. There have been numerous investigation to mitigate the impacts from debris flow; however, the estimation as preparedness measure has not been successful due to nonlinear and multiphase characteristics of phenomena both in material and process inherent in the debris flow. This study presents a numerical approach to simulate the debris flow using open source code of computational fluid dynamics, OpenFOAM with non-Newtonian viscosity model for three phase material modeling. In order to validate the proposed numerical method, the quantitative evaluations were made by comparisons with experimental results and qualitative analysis for the dispersion characteristics was carried for the case of debris flow in the actual incident from Mt. Umyeon.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.5
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• pp.889-896
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• 2020

The vertically inverted U-tube steam generator (UTSG) is widely used in the pressurized water reactor (PWR). The reverse flow behavior generally exists in some U-tubes of a steam generator (SG) under both single- and two-phase natural circulations (NCs). The behavior increases the flow resistance in the primary loop and reduces the heat transfer in the SG. As a consequence, the NC ability as well as the inherent safety of nuclear reactors is faced with severe challenges. The theoretical models for calculating single- and two-phase flow pressure drops in U-tubes are developed and validated in this paper. The two-phase reverse flow characteristics in two types of SGs are investigated base on the theoretical models, and the effects of the U-tube height, bending radius, inlet steam quality and primary side pressure on the behavior are analyzed. The conclusions may provide some promising references for SG optimization to reduce the disadvantageous behavior. It is also of significance to improve the NC ability and ensure the PWR safety during some accidents.

• KSTLE International Journal
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.101-109
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• 2002

This paper presents the fabrication and performance inspection of a peristaltic micropump by flow simulation. The valve-less micropump using the diffuser/nozzle is consists of base plate, mid plate, top plate and connection tubes fur inlet and outlet. In detail, the base plate is composed of two diffuser nozzles and three chambers, the mid plate consists of a glass diaphragm for the volumetric change of the pumping chamber. The inlet and outlet tubes are connected at the top plate and the actuator fur pressing the diaphragm is located beneath the top plate. The micropump is fabricated on the silicon wafer by DRIE (Deep Reactive ion Etching) process. The pumping performances are tested by the pneumatic test rig and compared with the simulated results fur various dimensions of diffuser nozzles. The pumping characteristics of the micropump by the volumetric change at the pumping chamber is modeled and simulated by the commercial software of FLOW-3D. The simulated results shows that reverse flow is the inherent phenomena in the diffuser nozzle type micropump, but it can be reduced at the dual pumping chamber model.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.227-239
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• 2015

The thermal, mechanical, and neutronic performance of the metal alloy fast reactor fuel design complements the safety advantages of the liquid metal cooling and the pool-type primary system. Together, these features provide large safety margins in both normal operating modes and for a wide range of postulated accidents. In particular, they maximize the measures of safety associated with inherent reactor response to unprotected, doublefault accidents, and to minimize risk to the public and plant investment. High thermal conductivity and high gap conductance play the most significant role in safety advantages of the metallic fuel, resulting in a flatter radial temperature profile within the pin and much lower normal operation and transient temperatures in comparison to oxide fuel. Despite the big difference in melting point, both oxide and metal fuels have a relatively similar margin to melting during postulated accidents. When the metal fuel cladding fails, it typically occurs below the coolant boiling point and the damaged fuel pins remain coolable. Metal fuel is compatible with sodium coolant, eliminating the potential of energetic fuel-coolant reactions and flow blockages. All these, and the low retained heat leading to a longer grace period for operator action, are significant contributing factors to the inherently benign response of metallic fuel to postulated accidents. This paper summarizes the past analytical and experimental results obtained in past sodium-cooled fast reactor safety programs in the United States, and presents an overview of fuel safety performance as observed in laboratory and in-pile tests.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.7
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• pp.2207-2220
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• 2021

Lead alloy is used as coolant in Lead-based cooled Fast Reactor (LFR). The natural characteristics of lead alloy are combined with the simple structural design of LFR. This constitutes the inherent safety characteristics of LFR. The main work of this paper is to take the main coolant pump (MCP) in the lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR) as the research object, and to study the flow pattern distribution of the internal flow field under the reverse rotation pump condition, the reverse rotation positive-flow braking condition and the reverse rotation negative-flow braking condition. In this paper, the double-outlet volute type and the space guide vane are selected as the potential designs of the CLEAR-I MCP. In this paper, the CFD method is used to study the potential reverse accident of the MCP. It is found that the highest flow velocity in the impeller appears at the impeller outlet, and the Q-H curves of the two design programs basically coincide. The space guide vane type MCP has better hydraulic performance under the reverse rotation positive-flow condition, the Q-H curves of the two designs gradually separate with increasing flow rate, and the maximum flow velocity inside the space guide vane type MCP is obviously lower than that of the double-outlet volute type. For the reverse rotation test of MCP, only the condition of the forward rotating pump of the main coolant pump is tested and verified. For the simulation of the MCP in LBE medium, it proved that the turbulence model and basic settings selected in the simulation are reliable.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.35-47
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• 2011

Dynamic characteristics of a flow control valve, which plays an important role in thrust and O/F control of liquid rocket engines, have been analyzed by the AMESim simulator modeling. The speed control method was proposed for the control of the flow valve equipped with a BLDC motor. The experimental results demonstrated the feasibility of systematical application as well as the performance of the speed control method. Moreover, the speed control method for BLDC motor is much simpler than the P control method in complex flow systems. With the speed control method, the control flow characteristics were evaluated according to plunger shapes. Consequently, same plunger shape proved to be more efficient in the mixture ratio control operated by two flow valves. It was also shown that the appropriate modification of plunger shapes could reduce the mixture ratio perturbation by 0.5%.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.471-477
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• 2003

The floating ring seal is often used in the turbopump (TP) unit of liquid rocket engine (LRE) owing to its inherent ability of minimizing the leakage flow and superior dynamic characteristics as well. This paper describes the test results concerned with the lock-up and dynamic characteristics of the floating ring seals in the turbopump. The characteristics of the floating ring seals were extracted from the frequency response function (FRF) by instrumental variable method. The experiment was tested at 7.0MPa and 0-24,800 rpm. And the test results were introduced about the dynamic characteristics of floating ring seal related with the eccentricity and attitude angle.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.22-27
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• 2009

The important problems that arise in the design and performance of the axial flow turbine are the prediction and control of secondary flows. Some progresses have been made on understanding flow conditions that occur when the inlet endwall boundary layer separates at the point in the endwall and rolls up into the horseshoe vortex. And the flows though an axial turbine tend to be extremely complex due to its inherent unsteady and viscous phenomena. The passing wakes generated from the trailing edge of the stator make an interaction with the rotor. Unsteady flow should be considered rotor/stator interactions. The main purpose of this research is control of secondary flow and improvement efficiency in turbine by leading edge modification in unsteady state. When the wake from the stator ran into the modified leading edge of the rotor, the leading edge generated the weak pressure fluctuation by complex passage flows. In conclusion, leading edge modification(bulb2) results in the reduced total pressure loss in the flow field.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.8
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• pp.2499-2508
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• 2021

Passive containment cooling systems (PCCSs) have been actively studied to improve the inherent safety of nuclear power plants. Hered, we present two concepts, open-loop PCCS (OL-PCCS) and closed-loop PCCS (CL-PCCS), applicable to the PWR with a concrete-type containment. We analyzed the heat-removal performance and flow instability of these PCCS concepts using the GOTHIC code. In both cases, PCCS performance improved when a passive containment cooling heat exchanger (PCCX) was installed in the lower part of the containment building. The OL-PCCS was found to be superior in terms of heat-removal performance. However, in terms of flow instability, the OL-PCCS was more vulnerable than the CL-PCCS. In particular, the possibility of flow instability was higher when the PCCX was installed in the upper part of the containment. Therefore, the installation location of the OL-PCCS should be restricted to minimize flow instability. Conversely, a CL-PCCS can be installed without any positional restriction by adjusting the initial system pressure within the loop, which eliminates flow instability. These results could be used as base data for the thermo-hydraulic evaluation of PCCS in PWR with a large dry concrete-type containment.