The Behavior of a jet passing through a grid-type obstacle; An Experimental investigation

Abe, Satoshi  ; Shibamoto, Yasuteru 

During a severe accident in a nuclear containment vessel, jets released from the primary system exhibit complex thermohydraulic behavior due to buoyancy effects and impingement on internal obstacles such as inner walls and floors. Thus, the obstacle-influenced jets are of interest in recent research activities. This paper describes an experimental investigation of the behavior of jets passing through a grid-type obstacle. The flow field was acquired by a particle image velocimetry system. The experiment captured the jet fragmentation by the grid-type obstacle and their recoupling. The mean velocity field obtained by postprocessing indicates a "Rectifying effect," with the axial velocity increasing at the center and the magnitude of the radial velocity decreasing. The meandering flow was suppressed due to this effect. In the near grid-obstacle region, the axial turbulence intensity was relatively large at the edge of each fragmented region due to shear stress. Moreover, the spatial distribution of the radial turbulence fluctuation became more complex. Further investigation is required to clarify the budget of the transport equation for turbulence fluctuation. The experimental data shown in this paper is useful for computational fluid dynamics validation.