Preliminary Design of a Fuel Element With Divergent Hot Gas Channel In Particle Bed Reactor for Nuclear Thermal Propulsion

The nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) system can shorten the travel time in deep space exploration and reduce the initial mass of the launch vehicle due to its superior characteristics including high specific impulse and large thrust. Particle bed reactor (PBR) is one of the most appropriate reactor concepts to equip the NTP systems. To make the best use of PBR, the thermal-hydraulic design of the fuel element should be carefully considered and a flow-power matching technology should be developed. In this paper, a novel design employing a divergent hot gas channel is proposed to achieve a uniform flow distribution with lower maximum temperature and pressure drop. Through the analysis of the 1D modified momentum equation in the inlet plenum and hot gas channel, the model of pressure drop is established. Then, the differential equation of the ideal cross-section of the hot gas channel is derived. At last, the flow and heat transfer process in the fuel element with divergent hot gas channel is simulated by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, and the reduction of pressure drop and temperature verifies the theoretical model. This study shows that the proposed design of the divergent hot gas channel can provide a new idea for thermal-hydraulic optimization of the PBR fuel element.