An Experimental Study of Two-Phase Flow in a Tight Lattice Using Wire-Mesh Sensor

Tight lattice bundle can improve the conversion ratio and the heat transfer coefficient between the fuel bundle and the coolant, which is widely used in the innovative reactor fuel bundle design. The P/D ratio of a tight lattice bundle is usually less than 1.1, which is smaller than that of a conventional rod bundle. In the small-break loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA), the steam-water two-phase flow will occur in the reactor. The investigation of gas-liquid two-phase flow in the tight lattice is very important to the reactor safety analysis. A dual sub-channels tight lattice was designed in this study. The original reference of the channel is the annular fuel bundle, with the fuel diameter of 15.52mm, pitch of 16.51mm, P/D = 1.06. The original reference of working condition is the stream-water two-phase flow under the pressure of 15.5MPa. The experimental condition is the air-water two-phase flow at the normal temperature and pressure. According to the ratio of a critical bubble diameter in the reactor (steam-water) to that in atmospheric conditions (air-water), the channel is zoomed in 2.7 times. The diameter of the rod in the dual sub-channels tight lattice is 42mm and the pitch is 44.6mm. The total length of the dual sub-channels tight lattice is 3m. A self-developed 16 × 32 Wire-mesh sensor (WMS) was used to measure the void fraction distribution of air-water two-phase flow in the dual sub-channels tight lattice channel. The spatial resolution of the WMS is 2.79mm and the temporal resolution is 5000fps. The WMS was installed at a distance of 2.5m from the channel inlet and 0.5m from the outlet, which can avoid the influence of outlet on bubbles. The experimental range of flow condition is 0.921–1.84m/s for the superficial liquid velocity and 0.0884–1.07m/s for the superficial gas velocity. The instantaneous and time-averaged void fraction distributions in the channel was measured. With the increase of superficial gas velocity, the distribution of void fraction distribution changed from the wall peak to the core peak. The characteristics of bubbles in the sub-channel were also discussed in this study.