Study on sodium-water reaction jet evaluation model based on engineering approaches with particle method

Kosaka, Wataru  ; Uchibori, Akihiro ; Yanagisawa, Hideki*; Takata, Takashi  ; Jang, S.*

If a pressurized water/water-vapor leaks from a heat transfer tube in a steam generator (SG) in a sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR), sodium-water reaction forms high-velocity, high-temperature, and corrosive jet. It would damage the other tubes and might propagate the tube failure in the SG. Thus, it is important to evaluate the effect of the tube failure propagation for safety assessment of SFR. The computational code LEAP-III can evaluate water leak rate during the tube failure propagation with short calculation time, since it consists of empirical formulae and one-dimensional equations of conservation. One of the empirical models, temperature distribution evaluation model, evaluates the temperature distribution in SG as circular arc isolines determined by experiments and preliminary analyses instead of complicated real distribution. In order to improve this model to get more realistic temperature distribution, we have developed the Lagrangian particle method based on engineering approaches. In this study, we have focused on evaluating gas flow in a tube bundle system, and constructed new models for the gas-particles behavior around a tube to evaluate void fraction distribution near the tube. Through the test analysis simulating one target tube system, we confirmed the capability of the models and next topic to improve the models.