Critical heat flux prediction for subcooled flow boiling in annulus

Liu, W.

Subcooled flow boiling is a boiling that begins and develops even though the mean enthalpy of liquid phase is lower than saturation. This forced convective boiling is one of the most efficient ways for the removal of high heat flux. It is widely used in the high heat flux components such as nuclear reactor cores, accelerator targets and fusion reactor components. The thermal outputs of these systems are restricted by Critical Heat Flux(CHF). Because of the importance of the CHF, lots of researches, including both experimental and mechanistic modelling, have been performed. However, the CHF prediction for rod bundles still remains unsolved. As the first step for the CHF prediction in rod bundles, in this paper, we tried to predict the CHF in annulus, which is the most basic flow geometry simplified from a rod bundle. We performed the CHF prediction by using liquid sublayer dryout model, combined with Nouri single phase velocity distribution correlation for annulus. The results show that the CHF in annulus can be predicted in an accuracy of about 20%.