• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.12
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• pp.2789-2802
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• 2020

Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are attracting wide attention due to their outstanding performance, extensive studies have been carried out for lead-based fast reactors (LFRs) that cooled with Lead or Lead-bismuth (LBE), and small modular natural circulation LFR is one of the promising candidates for SMRs and LFRs development. One of the challenges for the design small modular natural circulation LFR is to master the natural circulation thermal-hydraulic performance in the reactor primary circuit, while the natural circulation characteristics is a coupled thermal-hydraulic problem of the core thermal power, the primary loop layout and the operating state of secondary cooling system etc. Thus, accurate predicting the natural circulation LFRs thermal-hydraulic features are highly required for conducting reactor operating condition evaluate and Thermal hydraulic design optimization. In this study, a thermal-hydraulic analysis code is developed for small modular natural circulation LFRs, which is based on several mathematical models for natural circulation originally. A small modular natural circulation LBE cooled fast reactor named URANUS developed by Korea is chosen to assess the code's capability. Comparisons are performed to demonstrate the accuracy of the code by the calculation results of MARS, and the key thermal-hydraulic parameters agree fairly well with the MARS ones. As a typical application case, steady-state analyses were conducted to have an assessment of thermal-hydraulic behavior under nominal condition, and several parameters affecting natural circulation were evaluated. What's more, two characteristics parameters that used to analyze natural circulation LFRs natural circulation capacity were established. The analyses show that the core thermal power, thermal center difference and flow resistance is the main factors affecting the reactor natural circulation. Improving the core thermal power, increasing the thermal center difference and decreasing the flow resistance can significantly increase the reactor mass flow rate. Characteristics parameters can be used to quickly evaluate the natural circulation capacity of natural circulation LFR under normal operating conditions.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2001.06e
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• pp.474-481
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• 2001

This paper addresses a numerical method for predicting transient temperature distributions in the wall of a curved pipe subjected to internally thermal stratification flow. A simple and convenient numerical method of treating the unsteady conjugate heat transfer in the non-orthogonal coordinate systems is presented. The proposed method is implemented in a finite volume thermal-hydraulic computer code based on a cell-centered, non-staggered grid arrangement, the SIMPLEC algorithm, a higher-order bounded convection scheme, and the modified version of momentum interpolation method. Calculations are performed for the transient evolution of thermal stratification in two curved pipes, where the one has thick wall and the other has so thin wall that its presence can be negligible in the heat transfer analysis. The predicted results show that the thermally stratified flow and transient conjugate heat transfer in a curved pipe with a finite wall thickness can be satisfactorily analyzed by the present numerical method, and that the neglect of wall thickness in the prediction of pipe wall temperature distributions can provide unacceptably distorted results.

• Solar Energy
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.99-109
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• 1998

The study on ice thermal storage system is to improve total system performance in actual air-conditioning facilities. To attain the high efficiencies in ice thermal storage system, the improvement of thermal stratification is essential, therfore the process flow must be piston flow in thermal storage tank. Ice packing factor is better on condition that the inflowing temperature is low, the flow direction in the thermal storage is upward and the cylindericalthermal storage type is used. This result shows that the cylinderical ice storage tank has better storage capacity than the rectangular type in case of the same porocity.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.31 no.10
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• pp.876-883
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• 2007

Numerical simulations are conducted for the design of a micro thermal mass air flow sensor (MAFS), which consists of a microfabricated heater and thermopiles on the silicon-nitride ($Si_3N_4$) thin membrane structure. It is important to find the proper locations of these thermal elements in the design of MAFS with improved sensitivity. Three heating modes of the micro-heater are considered: constant temperature, constant power and heating pulses. The analyses are focused on the membrane temperature profile near the sensing section. Considered are the practical flow velocities, ranging from 3 m/s to 35 m/s, and the corresponding Reynolds numbers from 1000 to 10000. The results show that one of optimum sensing locations is about $100{\mu}m$ away from the microheater. It is concluded that the heating mode and configurations of thermal elements are the main factors for the MAFS with higher sensitivity.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.193-201
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• 2006

Thermal performance model was developed for a cross-flow aluminum heat exchanger with relatively short passage. Appropriate heat transfer coefficient and friction factor equations for laminar channel flow were obtained considering developing regions. The heat exchanger was analyzed using the unmixed cross-flow ${\epsilon}$-NTU relationship considering leak-age between streams. Thermal contact between corrugations and plates was also considered. Tests were separately conducted for two samples - one made of non-treated aluminum sheets, and the other made of varnish-treated ones. The samples were made by stacking corrugations and plates one after another. The model adequately predicted the thermal performance and pressure drop of the non-treated heat exchanger. The thermal performance of the varnish-treated one was $7{\sim}12%$ overpredicted, and the pressure drop of the varnished-treated heat exchanger was $5{\sim}15%$ underpredicted. The air leakage ratio of the non-treated heat exchanger was $23{\sim}26%$. The ratio decreased to less than $10%$ with the varnish treatment.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.347-355
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• 2021

This paper is a study on the thermal design of printed circuit heat exchanger (PCHE) to supply cryogenic high pressure liquid hydrogen stored from hydrogen liquefaction process by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). This PCHE should be thermally designed to raise the temperature of cryogenic liquid hydrogen to a desired temperature and also to be anti-icing to avoid any local freezing in hot channel. This research presents the effect of inlet velocity and inlet temperature of hydrogen, and the effect of flow configurations of co/counter-flow on thermal design of PCHE heat exchanger based on various CFD simulation analysis.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.613-620
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• 1985

An analysis on the thermal instability of horizontal Blasius flow in the form of longitudinal vortices has been carried out by introducing the 3-dimensional spatial dependence of the disturbance quantities. The stability problem has been simplified significantly by considering the limiting case of infinite Prandtl number and by skilfully replacing the boundary conditions at infinity with the interface conditions at the edge of the thermal boundary layer (or by simply confining the thermal disturbances in the thermal boundary layer). The advantage of this approach is that the critical values marking the onset of thermal instability can be readily obtained as solutions of the eigenvalues problems formulated by a 6*6(or a 5*5) determinant. Present analysis provides reasonable explanations on the existing experimental and theoretical data. Especially, the heat transfer correlation based on the present analysis agrees well with the existing experimental data.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.117-126
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• 2008

In this paper, a new reactor core design is proposed on the basis of a mixed core concept consisting of a thermal zone and a fast zone. The geometric structure of the fuel assembly of the thermal zone is similar to that of a conventional thermal supercritical water-cooled reactor(SCWR) core with two fuel pin rows between the moderator channels. In spite of the counter-current flow mode, the co-current flow mode is used to simplify the design of the reactor core and the fuel assembly. The water temperature at the exit of the thermal zone is much lower than the water temperature at the outlet of the pressure vessel. This lower temperature reduces the maximum cladding temperature of the thermal zone. Furthermore, due to the high velocity of the fast zone, a wider lattice can be used in the fuel assembly and the nonuniformity of the local heat transfer can be minimized. This mixed core, which combines the merits of some existing thermal SCWR cores and fast SCWR cores, is proposed for further detailed analysis.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.31 no.10
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• pp.832-839
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• 2007

The geometry and dimensions of an expansion chamber are decisive factors in thermal puffer plasma chamber designs. Because they together dominate the temperature and speed at which the cooling gas from the chamber flows back through a flow channel to the arcing zone for the successful interruption of fault currents. In this study, we calculated the flow and mass transfer driven by arc plasma, and investigated the effects of a flow guide installed inside a thermal puffer plasma chamber. It is found that the existing cold gas of the chamber mixes with hot gases entrained from the arcing zone and is subjected to compression due to pressure build-up in the chamber. The pressure build-up with the flow guide is larger than that without due to a vortex which rotates clockwise around the chamber center. By the reverse pressure gradient, the mixing gas of the chamber flows back out for cooling down the residual plasma near current zero. In the case with the flow guide, the temperature just before current zero is lower than that without, and the Cu concentration with high electrical conductivity is also less than that without the flow guide.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.129-136
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• 2006

Optimal design of an air-to-liquid finned plate heat exchanger is considered theoretically in this study. Based on existing correlations for the pressure loss and the heat transfer in channel flows, the optimal configuration of the plate heat exchanger including the optimal plate pitch and the optimal fin pitch is obtained to maximize the heat transfer within the limit of the pressure drop for a given flow depth of the plate heat exchanger. It is found that the optimal fin pitch is about one ninth of the optimal plate pitch. In the optimal configuration, the flow and thermal condition in the channels is just at the boundary between the laminar developing and laminar fully developed states. It is also found when reducing the flow depth of plate heat exchangers for compactness, the heat transfer performance can be maintained exactly the same if the geometric parameters such as the plate thickness, plate pitch, fin thickness, and fin pitch are reduced proportional to the square root of the flow depth as long as the flow keeps laminar within the heat exchangers.