Numerical Study of the Air Ingress Accident of the HTR-PM and Possible Mitigation Measures

The double-ended guillotine break (DEGB) of the horizontal coaxial gas duct of a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor is an extremely hypothetical accident, which could cause the air to enter into the primary circuit and react with graphite in the reactor core. The performance of the HTR-PM plant under this extremely hypothetical accident has been studied by the system code TINTE in this work. The results show that the maximum fuel temperature will not reach the temperature design limitation, and the graphite oxidation will not cause unacceptable consequences even under some conservative assumptions. Moreover, nitrogen and helium injected from the fuel charging tube were studied as the possible mitigation measures to further alleviate the consequences of this air ingress accident. The preliminary results show that only the flow rate of nitrogen injected reaches a certain value, which can effectively alleviate the consequences, while for helium injection, both high and small flow rate can prevent or cut off the natural circulation and alleviate the consequences. The reason is that helium is much lighter than nitrogen, and the density difference between the coolant channel and the reactor core is small when helium is injected. Considering the injection velocity, the total usage amount, and the start time of gas injection, helium injected with a small flow rate is suggested.

Study of the Affinity Law of Energy and Cavitation Characteristics in Emergency Drainage Pumps at Different Rotating Speeds

The affinity law is widely used in pump design and experiments. The applicability of the affinity law in an emergency drainage pump at different rotating speeds was studied. Experiments and numerical simulation through ANSYS CFX (Computational Fluid Dynamics X) 15.0 software were used to research the affinity law characteristics. Results show that the simulation of characteristics is basically consistent with the experimental curves. In small flow rate conditions, due to the existence of obvious differential pressure between the pressure side and the suction side in the impeller blade tip area, the leakage flow occurs at the tip clearance, which collides with the main stream at the inlet and generates vortices at the leading edge of the impeller. The tip leakage flows of the pump at four different rotating speeds were compared, and it was found that the tip leakage increased with increasing rotation speed, and at the same rotation speed, the tip leakage flow was large in the small flow rate condition, which led to the simulation value of the characteristics being greater than the scaling value. As the flow rate increased, the anti-cavitation performance of the pump became worse and the hydraulic loss was larger, so the pump’s performance curve deviated from the scaling curve.

Investigation of Speed Matching Affecting Contrarotating Fan’s Performance Using Wireless Sensor Network including Big Data and Numerical Simulation

This paper describes the investigations performed to better understand two-stage rotor speed matching in a contrarotating fan. In addition, this study develops a comprehensive measuring and communication system for a contrarotating fan using ZigBee network. The investigation method is based on three-dimensional RANS simulations; the RANS equations are solved by the numerical method in conjunction with a SST turbulence model. A wireless measurement system using big data method is first designed, and then a comparison is done with experimental measurements to outline the capacity of the numerical method. The results show that when contrarotating fan worked under designed speed, performance of two-stages rotors could not be matched as the designed working condition was deviated. Rotor 1 had huge influences on flow rate characteristics of a contrarotating fan. Rotor 2 was influenced by flow rates significantly. Under large flow rate condition, the power capability of rotor 2 became very weak; under working small flow rate condition, overloading would take place to class II motor. In order to solve the performance mismatch between two stages of CRF under nondesigned working conditions, under small flow rate condition, the priority shall be given to increase of the speed of rotor 1, while the speed of rotor 2 shall be reduced appropriately; under large flow rate condition, the speed of rotor 1 shall be reduced and the speed of rotor 2 shall be increased at the same time.

Numerical Investigation of Flow Instability in Centrifugal Pump Based on Energy Gradient Method

Simulation of turbulent flow in a pump is carried out with the RANS equations and the RNG k-epsilon turbulence model. Numerical simulation has been compared with the experimental data. The results show that separating vortex is firstly produced at the pressure side of the impeller passage near the tongue. Then it spreads to the inlet and outlet of the impeller passages and moved to the centre region of impeller passages from the boundaries. Finally, it almost occupies all the impeller passages and multiple vortices exist in impeller passages at small flow rate. It is found that the tongue has large effect on the flow in the impeller passage approaching to it. The impeller passage near the tongue is easily tending to be unstable comparing with others passages. The energy gradient theory is used to analyze the flow stability in the impeller. The region with larger value of energy gradient function K means the bigger turbulence intensity and poor flow stability. At small flow rate the regions with large value of K are enlarged and are mainly located at both sides of blade pressure and suction surfaces where the flow is easily tending to be unstable.

Optimization and Validation of Secondary Flow Effect for Flowrange Enhancement in a Low Solidity Circular Cascade Diffuser

A Low Solidity circular cascade Diffuser (LSD) in a centrifugal blower is designed by means of multi-objective optimization technique. An optimization code with a meta-model assisted evolutionary algorithm is used with a commercial CFD code ANSYS-CFX. The optimization is aiming at improving the static pressure coefficient at design point and at small flow rate condition while constraining the slope of the lift coefficient curve. Seven detailed design parameters describing the shape and position of the LSD vane were introduced. Moreover, a small tip clearance of the LSD blade was applied in order to activate and to stabilize the secondary flow effect at small flow rate conditions. The optimized LSD blade has been manufactured and the characteristic of optimized LSD is confirmed by the experimental test rig. Optimized LSD has an extended operating range of 114 % towards smaller flow rate as compared to the baseline design without deteriorating the diffuser pressure recovery at design point. The detailed flow in the diffuser is also confirmed by means of a Particle Image Velocimetery (PIV). The flow was compared between in the cases with and without tip clearance. In spite of the fluctuating flow at the diffuser inlet, secondary flow spreads to the whole area of LSD blade pitch stably. Stable secondary flow suppresses flow separation at the suction surface of the LSD. It is found that the optimized LSD blade shows good improvement of the blade loading in the whole operating range, while at small flow rate the flow separation on the LSD blade has been successfully suppressed by the secondary flow effect.