Prediction of unsteady flow field in a primary circuit hot-leg piping of a sodium-cooled fast reactor

Abstract

A study on flow induced vibration in the primary cooling system of Japan Sodium cooled Fast Reactor (JSFR) consisting of large diameter pipe and pipe elbow with short curvature radius ("short-elbow") has been conducted. Flow-induced vibration in the short-elbow is an important issue in design study of JSFR, because it may affect to structural integrity of the pipe. In this paper, unsteady flow characteristics in the JSFR short-elbow pipe related to the large-scale eddy motion were estimated based on knowledge from existing studies for curved pipes and scaled water experiments and numerical simulations for the JSFR hot-leg piping. © 2012 The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers.