Experimental and computational studies of thermal mixing in next generation nuclear reactors

The Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR) is a proposed next generation nuclear power plant. The VHTR utilizes helium as a coolant in the primary loop of the reactor. Helium traveling through the reactor mixes below the reactor in a region known as the lower plenum. In this region there exists large temperature and velocity gradients due to non-uniform heat generation in the reactor core. Due to these large gradients, concern should be given to reducing thermal striping in the lower plenum. Thermal striping is the phenomena by which temperature fluctuations in the fluid and transferred to and attenuated by surrounding structures. Thermal striping is a known cause of long term material failure. To better understand and predict thermal striping in the lower plenum two separate bodies of work have been conducted. First, an experimental facility capable of predictably recreating some aspects of flow in the lower plenum is designed according to scaling analysis of the VHTR. Namely the facility reproduces jets issuing into a crossflow past a tube bundle. Secondly, extensive studies investigate the mixing of a non-isothermal parallel round triple-jet at two jet-to-jet spacings was conducted. Experimental results were validation with an open source computational fluid dynamics package, OpenFOAMRTM. Additional care is given to understanding the implementation of the realizable k-a and Launder Gibson RSM turbulence Models in OpenFOAMRTM. In order to measure velocity and temperature in the triple-jet experiment a detailed investigation of temperature compensated hotwire anemometry is carried out with special concern being given to quantify the error with the measurements. Finally qualitative comparisons of trends in the experimental results and the computational results is conducted. A new and unexpected physical behavior was observed in the center jet as it appeared to spread unexpectedly for close spacings (S/Djet = 1.41).