Development of erosion test methods on underexpanded inert-gas impinging jets injected in liquid sodium

Kudo, Hideyuki*; Ota, Junki*; Sugiyama, Kenichiro*; Narabayashi, Tadashi*; Ohshima, Hiroyuki; Kurihara, Akikazu 

When a heat transfer tube wall in a steam generator of a sodium-cooled fast reactor fails, high-pressure steam leaks into low-pressure liquid sodium side. Then the high-temperature and highly corrosive reaction jet causes secondary failures of neighboring heat transfer tubes. The objective of the present study is to develop an experimental method to obtain data that is necessary to validate and improve a safety evaluation code on the sodium-water reaction. In the present paper, a method of sodium-droplet erosion test at the position of the local structure in underexpanded inert-gas impinging jets using the visualization method, which was developed in our previous study, was reported. The erosion phenomena observed in the sodium-droplet entrained region, where intensive erosion is expected, were found to be discussed using the existing knowledge of liquid droplet impingement (LDI) obtained in water experiments.