• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05b
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• pp.2194-2199
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• 2007

An experimental study is performed to investigate the thermal and flow characteristics of subcooled liquid nitrogen in a natural circulation loop. Experimental apparatus is designed and constructed such that a closed loop is cooled at the top by a cryocooler and heated nearly at the bottom by cartridge heaters. Steady state is obtained by controlling the heating power to the cartridge heaters and a thin-film heater to reduce the cooling power of the cryocooler. Temperature is measured at several locations of the loop and the mass flow rate through the loop is estimated from the energy balance in terms of the measured temperatures. Experiment is repeated for various values of the vertical height between the cooling and heating parts. The results show that the heat transfer capability of the loop has a maximum at a certain value of height. The optimal height to maximize the heat transfer is in a good agreement with analytical prediction to take into account the buoyancy and viscous forces in the loop.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.11
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• pp.3635-3642
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• 2021

Natural circulation systems (NCSs) are extensively applied in nuclear power plants because of their simplicity and inherent safety features. For some passive natural circulation systems in floating nuclear power plants (FNPPs), the ocean is commonly used as the heat sink. Condensation induced water hammer (CIWH) events may appear as the steam directly contacts the subcooled seawater, which seriously threatens the safe operation and integrity of the NCSs. Nevertheless, the research on the formation mechanisms of CIWH is insufficient, especially in NCSs. In this paper, the characteristics of flow rate and fluid temperature are emphatically analyzed. Then the formation types of CIWH are identified by visualization method. The experimental results reveal that due to the different size and formation periods of steam slugs, the flow rate presents continuous and irregular oscillation. The fluid in the horizontal hot pipe section near the water tank is always subcooled due to the reverse flow phenomenon. Moreover, the transition from stratified flow to slug flow can cause CIWH and enhance flow instability. Three types of formation mechanisms of CIWH, including the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, the interaction of solitary wave and interface wave, and the pressure wave induced by CIWH, are obtained by identifying 67 CIWH events.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.419-429
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• 2022

Effects of operating variables on temperature profile and performance of 3 MWth chemical looping combustion system were estimated by mass and energy balance analysis based on configuration and dimension of the system determined by design tool. Air reactor gas velocity, fuel reactor gas velocity, solid circulation rate, and solid input percentage to fluidized bed heat exchanger were considered as representative operating variables. Overall heat output and oxygen concentration in the exhaust gas from the air reactor increased but temperature difference decreased as air reactor gas velocity increased. Overall heat output, required solid circulation rate, and temperature difference increased as fuel reactor gas velocity increased. However, overall heat output and temperature difference decreased as solid circulation rate increased. Temperature difference decreased as solid circulation rate through the fluidized bed heat exchanger increased. Effect of each variables on temperature profile and performance can be determined and these results will be helpful to determine operating range of each variable.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.03b
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• pp.308-311
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• 2008

As a severe accident mitigation strategy in a nuclear power plant, ERVC(External Reactor Vessel Cooling) has been proposed. Under ERVC conditions, where a molten corium is relocated in a reactor vessel lower head, a natural circulation two-phase flow is driven in the annular gap between the reactor vessel wall and its insulation. This flow should be sufficient to remove the decay heat of the molten corium and maintain the integrity of the reactor vessel. Preliminary experimental study was performed to estimate the natural circulation two-phase flow. The experimental facility which is one dimensional, the half height, and the 1/238 channel area of APR1400, was prepared and the experiments were carried out to estimate the natural circulation two-phase flow with varying the parameters of the coolant inlet area, the heat rate, and the coolant inlet subcooling. In results, the periodic circulation flow was observed and the characteristics were varied from the experimental parameters. The frequency of the natural circulation flow rate increased as the wall heat flux increased.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2004.04a
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• pp.2141-2145
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• 2004

As part of study on thermal hydraulic behavior in the reactor cavity under external vessel cooling in the APR (Advanced Power Reactor) 1400, one dimensional two phase flow of steady state in the reactor cavity have been analyzed to investigate a coolant circulation mass flow rate in the annulus region between the reactor vessel and the insulation material using the RELAP5/MOD3 computer code. The RELAP5/MOD3 results have shown that a two phase natural circulation flow of 300 - 600 kg/s is generated in the annulus region between the reactor vessel and the insulation material when the external vessel cooling has been applied in the APR 1400. An increase in the heat flux of the inner vessel leads to an increase of the coolant mass flow rate. An increase in the coolant outlet area leads to an increase in the coolant circulation mass flow rate, but the coolant inlet area does not effective on the coolant circulation mass flow rate. The change of the lower coolant outlet to a lower position affects the coolant circulation mass flow rate, but the variation trend is not consistent.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.13-22
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• 1997

Power flow characteristics of a hydro-mechanical transmission system(HMT) are investigated for tracked vehicle in steering. A HMT consisting of two hydrostatic pump motors(HST), several planetary gear trains and steer differential gear is considered. In order to obtain the direction and magnitude of the power flow of the HMT, network theory for the general power transmission is used. Network model for the HMT in steering is developed, which consists of shafts, nodes and transmission elements such as clutch, gear, etc. Power flow analysis procedure consists of two stages : (1) traction force analysis in steering, (2) power flow analysis in HMT. Torque and speed of every transmission element of the HMT is determined from the network analysis. Also, efficiency, mechanical and hydraulic power loss including HST, are obtained. In addition, the regenerative power flow resulting from steering can be studied in graphic display. The power flow analysis program(PCSTEER) developed in this work can be used as a useful design tool for the tracked vehicle with HMT.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.60-69
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• 2014

This paper proposed the circulation current control scheme in the single phase inverter system. The load experiment of the power conversion system including the UPS usually uses the passive components such as resistors and inductors. Therefore, the energy consumption is serious problem. In addition, the system is out of order when it is installed in the local area, and the load experiment can not perform adequately after troubleshooting, because there is no the load equipment, and the power capacity is not enough in the local area. The paper does the research on the circulation current control scheme, it does not need the load equipment, and the load current can reuse as the input current of the equipment. Instead of the conventional method the voltage-voltage and voltage-current control scheme introduced the parallel converter concept is newly proposed, and the validity of the proposed control scheme is investigated by both simulation and experimental results.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.92-98
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• 2018

The flow of cooling water in a passive containment cooling system (PCCS), used to remove heat released in design basis accidents from a concrete containment of light water nuclear power plant, was conducted in order to investigate the thermo-fluid equilibrium among many parallel tubes of PCCS. Numerical simulations of the subcooled boiling flow within a coolant loop of a PCCS, which will be installed in innovative pressurized-water reactor (PWR), were conducted using the commercially available computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software ANSYS-CFX. Shear stress transport (SST) and the RPI model were used for turbulence closure and subcooled flow boiling, respectively. As the first step, the simplified geometry of PCCS with 36 tubes was modeled in order to reduce computational resource. Even and uneven thermal loading conditions were applied at the outer walls of parallel tubes for the simulation of the coolant flow in the PCCS at the initial phase of accident. It was observed that the natural circulation maintained in single-phase for all even and uneven thermal loading cases. For uneven thermal loading cases, coolant velocity in each tube were increased according to the applied heat flux. However, the flows were mixed well in the header and natural circulation of the whole cooling loop was not affected by uneven thermal loading significantly.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.2085-2098
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• 2016

Laminated busbars with a low stray inductance are widely used in NPC three-level inverters, even though some of them have poor performances in heat equilibrium and overvoltage suppression. Therefore, a theoretical method is in need to establish an accurate mathematical model of laminated busbars and to calculate the impedance and stray inductance of each commutation loop to improve the heat equilibrium and overvoltage suppression performance. Firstly, an equivalent circuit of a NPC three-level inverter laminated busbar was built with an analysis of the commutation processes. Secondly, on the basis of a 3D (three dimensional) cubical thermal model and mirror circulation theory, a supersymmetric mirror circulation 3D cubical thermal model was built. Based on this, the laminated busbar was decomposed in 3D space to calculate the equivalent resistance and stray inductance in each commutation loop. Finally, the model and analysis results were put into a busbar design, simulation and experiments, whose results demonstrate the accuracy and feasibility of the proposed method.

• Advances in Energy Research
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.255-275
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• 2017

The advantages of using natural circulation (NC) as a cooling system, has prompted the worldwide development to investigate this phenomenon more than before. The interesting application of the NC in low power experimental facilities and research reactors, highlights the obligation of study in these laminar flows. The inherent oscillations of NC between hot source and cold sink in low Grashof numbers necessitates stability analysis of cooling flow with experimental or numerical schemes. For this type of analysis, numerical methods could be implemented to desired mass, momentum and energy equations as an efficient instrument for predicting the behavior of the flow field. In this work, using the explicit, implicit and Crank-Nicolson methods, the fluid flow parameters in a natural circulation experimental test loop are obtained and the sensitivity of solving approaches are discussed. In this way, at first, the steady state and transient results from explicit are obtained and compared with experimental data. The implicit and crank-Nicolson scheme is investigated in next steps and in subsequent this research is focused on the numerical aspects of instability prediction for these schemes. In the following, the assessment of the flow behavior with coarse and fine mesh sizes and time-steps has been reported and the numerical schemes convergence are compared. For more detail research, the natural circulation of fluid was modeled by ANSYS-CFX software and results for the experimental loop are shown. Finally, the stability map for rectangular closed loop was obtained with employing the Nyquist criterion.