Experimental Study on the Flow Characteristics of Rod Bundle Under Rolling Motion

The floating reactor system will be rolling, heaving and other movements affected by waves, wind, etc. These motions will introduce additional inertial force field into the rod bundle, thus affecting the flow characteristics in the rod bundle channel. In order to study the influence of rolling motion on the flow characteristics of rod bundle, a visualization research of the flow field of rod bundle channel with a pitch-to-diameter ratio of 1.326 was carried out under rolling motion. The results show that under a small driving force, the rolling motion has a significant effect on the flow field in the rod bundle, affecting the velocity distribution in different sub-channels, and there is transverse mixing between adjacent sub-channels. With the increase of driving force, the influence of rolling motion is gradually weakened. The flow field distribution under rolling motion is significantly different from that under pulsating flow. The experimental results show that the influence of rolling motion on the middle sub-channel of the rod bundle channel is small, and the influence on the edge sub-channel is large. The velocity field of the subchannels on both sides of the edge fluctuates periodically, and the wave phase is inverse. This study shows that the flow field variation caused by rolling motion is different from that caused by pulsating flow, and the flow field of fuel assembly in floating reactor system under ocean condition is further studied.