• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.1902-1912
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• 2024

This paper presents results from system-level modeling of a water-based reactor cavity cooling system using RELAP5-3D. The computational model is benchmarked with experimental data from a half-scale RCCS test facility at Argonne National Laboratory. The model prediction is first compared with a two-phase oscillatory baseline experimental case where mixed accuracy is obtained. The model shows reasonable prediction of mass flow rate, pressure, and temperature but significant overprediction of void fraction. The model prediction is then compared with a fault case where the inlet of the risers is gradually reduced using a throttling valve. As the valve is closed, the model is able to predict some major flow phenomena observed in the experiment such as the dampening of oscillations, the reintroduction of oscillations, as well as boiling, flashing, and geysering in the risers. However, the timeline of these events are not well captured by the model. The model is also used to investigate the evolution of flow regime in the chimney. This work highlights that the semi-empirical constitutive relations used in RELAP-3D could have a strong influence on the accuracy of the model in two-phase oscillatory flows.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.118-120
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• 2003

The behavior of viscous fingerings caused by an external force is investigated by using a two­phase lattice Boltzmann method. The effects of the modified capillary number, the viscosity contrast, and the modified Darcy-Rayleigh number on the instability of interfaces are found. The calculated wave numbers are in good agreement with the theoretical ones in the range of wave numbers smaller than 10, but the calculated ones tend to become smaller than the theoretical ones in higher wave numbers.

• 한국연소학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2015.12a
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• pp.215-218
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• 2015

Simultaneous laser ignition and spectroscopy is a scheme that enables rapid determination of the local equivalence ratio and condensed fuel concentration during a reaction in a two phase spray flame. We have conducted quantitative analysis of the LIBS signals according to the equivalence ratio, droplet size, droplet number density and droplet concentration as a part of novel feedback control strategy proposed for flame ignition and stabilization with simultaneous in situ combustion flow diagnostics. This is a desirable scheme since such real time information onboard an engine for instance can be constantly monitored and fed back to the control loop to enhance the mixing process and minimize emissions of unwanted species and potential combustion instability.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.11
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• pp.4322-4328
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• 2022

The two-fluid model is widely used to describe two-phase flows in complex systems such as nuclear reactors. Although the two-phase flow was successfully simulated, the standard two-fluid model suffers from an ill-posed nature. There are several remedies for the ill-posedness of the one-dimensional (1D) two-fluid model; among those, artificial viscosity is the focus of this study. Some previous works added artificial diffusion terms to both mass and momentum equations to render the two-fluid model well-posed and demonstrated that this method provided a numerically converging model. However, they did not consider mass conservation, which is crucial for analyzing a closed reactor system. In fact, the total mass is not conserved in the previous models. This study improves the artificial viscosity model such that the 1D incompressible two-fluid model is well-posed, and the total mass is conserved. The water faucet and Kelvin-Helmholtz instability flows were simulated to test the effect of the proposed artificial viscosity model. The results indicate that the proposed artificial viscosity model effectively remedies the ill-posedness of the two-fluid model while maintaining a negligible total mass error.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2001.05a
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• pp.368-373
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• 2001

A major concern on high-energy centrifugal pump is the potential for interaction of two-phase flow phenomena with mechanical response of the pumping elements. The other concern is the pressure pulsations created from trailing edge of the impeller blade and flow separation and recirculation at partial load in centrifugal pumps. These interactions generating between rotor and casing cause dynamic pulsation on pump and exciting pipeline vibration. The higher severity responses, the more lead to failure of pump and system components. Finally, it cause severe axial vibration of single stage pump due to the hydraulic instability in flow condition below BEP.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.50 no.2
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• pp.129-135
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• 2012

High speed casting technology is an attractive method to increase the productivity of continuous casting. However, high speed casting causes flow instability of molten steel in a mold. In this study, Large Eddy Simulation (LES) has been performed to identify the characteristics of mold flow for various shapes of submerged entry nozzles. The LES code has been newly developed to efficiently compute the two-phase flow by using the Fractional Step Method (FSM) combined with the Volume of Fluid (VOF) method. The Immersed Boundary Method was used to implement the shape of the submerged entry nozzle. Three cases of discharge angle of the submerged entry nozzle were computed and compared. The current results shed light on improving shape design of a submerged entry nozzle.

• 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 the Korean Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.197-207
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• 2013

The Cahn-Hilliard equation was proposed as a phenomenological model for describing the process of phase separation of a binary alloy. The equation has been applied to many physical applications such as amorphological instability caused by elastic non-equilibrium, image inpainting, two- and three-phase fluid flow, phase separation, flow visualization and the formation of the quantum dots. To solve the Cahn-Hillard equation, many numerical methods have been proposed such as the explicit Euler's, the implicit Euler's, the Crank-Nicolson, the semi-implicit Euler's, the linearly stabilized splitting and the non-linearly stabilized splitting schemes. In this paper, we investigate each scheme in finite-difference schemes by comparing their performances, especially stability and efficiency. Except the explicit Euler's method, we use the fast solver which is called a multigrid method. Our numerical investigation shows that the linearly stabilized stabilized splitting scheme is not unconditionally gradient stable in time unlike the known result. And the Crank-Nicolson scheme is accurate but unstable in time, whereas the non-linearly stabilized splitting scheme has advantage over other schemes on the time step restriction.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.655-665
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• 2024

The objective of the present experimental study is to investigate the effect of inlet throttling on the thermohydraulic stability of a large scale water-based Reactor Cavity Cooling System (RCCS). The test was performed using the water-based Natural convection Shutdown heat removal Test Facility (NSTF) at Argonne, which represented a ½ axial scale and 12.5° sector slice of the full scale Framatome 625 MW_t SC-HTGR RCCS concept. A two-phase steady state was first established through direct condensate refill, followed by increased inlet throttling over 10 stages, corresponding to a loss coefficient K over the range of 0.05-653. With the inlet throttling gradually increased, the system experienced a unique transition process between stabilization and destabilization. Through a stability analysis, three instability mechanisms were identified in the present test, including a compound mechanism due to both natural circulation oscillations (NCOs) and density wave oscillations (DWOs), Type-II DWOs, and geysering.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1996.05b
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• pp.349-355
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• 1996

In this study, the mechanistic critical heat flux (CHF) model and correlation for water are derived based on flow excursion (or Ledinegg instability) criterion and the simplified two-phase homogeneous model. The relationship between CHF for the water and the principal parameters such as mass flux heat of vaporization, heated length-to-diameter ratio, vapor-liquid density ratio and inlet subcooling is derived on the developed correlation. The developed CHF correlation predicts very well at the applicable ranges, 1 < P < 40 bar, 1, 300 < G 27, 00 kg/$m^2$s and inlet quality is less than -0.1. The overall mean ratio of predicted to experimental CHF value is 0.988 with standard deviation of 0.046.