Analysis of gas entrainment phenomenon from free liquid surface for a sodium-cooled fast reactor design (Velocity profile and Strouhal number in a flow field)

Uchida, Mao*; Sakai, Takaaki*; Ezure, Toshiki ; Tanaka, Masaaki  

An evaluation method based on numerical analyses has been developed to predict occurrences gas entrainment phenomena at a free surface in a sodium-cooled fast reactor. In this study, experiments were conducted for gas entrainments due to drifting free surface vortexes observed in a circulating water tunnel geometry. Numerical analyses were also conducted in the same geometry using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. Then, Strouhal numbers of vortex frequency and detailed flow velocity profiles were compared between experimental results and numerical results to clarify the evaluation accuracy of CFD calculation. As the results, the Strouhal numbers of the vortex frequency obtained from numerical analyses showed good agreement with the experimental data.