The prediction of fluidelastic forces in triangular tube bundles subjected to a two-phase flow: The effect of the flow approach angle

2021 ◽  
Vol 106 ◽  
pp. 103386
Author(s):  
Omar Sadek ◽  
Atef Mohany ◽  
Marwan Hassan
2021 ◽  
Vol 321 ◽  
pp. 01002
Author(s):  
Claire Dubot ◽  
Vincent Melot ◽  
Claudine Béghein ◽  
Cyrille Allery ◽  
Clément Bonneau

Being able to predict the void fraction is essential for a numerical prediction of the thermohydraulic behaviour in steam generators. Indeed, it determines two-phase mixture density and affects two-phase mixture velocity which enable to evaluate the pressure drop of heat exchanger, the mass transfer and heat transfer coefficients. In this study, the flow is modelled by coupling Ansys Fluent with an in-house code library where a CFD porous media approach is implemented. In this code, the two-phase flow has been modelled so far using the Eulerian model. However, this two-phase model requires interaction laws between phases which are not known and/or reliable for a flow within a tube bundle. The aim of this paper is to use the mixture model, for which it is easier to implement suitable correlations for tube bundles. By expressing the relative velocity, as a function of slip, the void fraction model of Feenstra et al. developed for upward cross-flow through horizontal tube bundles is introduced. With this method, physical phenomena that occur in tube bundles are taken into consideration in the mixture model. The developed approach is validated based on the experimental results obtained by Dowlati et al.


2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Ribatskia ◽  
J. R. Thome

This paper presents a state-of-the-art review of the hydrodynamic aspects of two-phase flow across horizontal tube bundles. The review covers studies related to the evaluation of void fraction, two-phase flow behaviors and pressure drops on the shell side of staggered and in-line tube bundles for upward, downward and side-to-side flows. This study of the literature critically describes the proposed flow pattern maps and semi-empirical correlations for predicting void fraction and frictional pressure drop. These predicting methods are generally based on experimental results for adiabatic air-water flows. A limited number of experimental studies with R-11 and R-113 were also carried out in the past. The review shows noticeable discrepancies among the available prediction methods. Finally, this study suggests that further research focusing on the development of representative databanks and new prediction methods is still necessary.


Author(s):  
Ryoichi Kawakami ◽  
Seinosuke Azuma ◽  
Toshifumi Nariai ◽  
Kazuo Hirota ◽  
Hideyuki Morita ◽  
...  

Abstract The in-plane (in-flow) fluid-elastic instability (in-plane FEI) of triangular tube arrays caused tube-to-tube wear indications as observed in the U-bend regions of tube bundles of the San Onofre Unit-3 steam generators[1]. Several researches revealed that the in-plane FEI is likely to occur in a tightly packed triangular tube array under high velocity and low friction conditions, while it is not likely to occur in a square array tube bundle. In order to confirm the potential of steam-wise fluid-elastic instability of square arrays, the critical flow velocity in two-phase flow, (sulfur hexafluoride-ethanol) which simulates steam-water flow, was investigated. Two types of test rigs were prepared to confirm the effect of the tube diameter and tube pitch ratio on the critical velocity. In both rigs, vibration amplitudes were measured in both in-flow and out-of-flow directions in various flow conditions. In any case, in-flow fluid elastic instability was not detected. Based on the results of the tests, it is concluded that the flow interaction force is small for concern to occur the fluid-elastic instability in the in-flow direction of the square tube bundles of steam generators.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (7) ◽  
pp. 2088
Author(s):  
Wael Ahmed ◽  
Adib Fatayerji ◽  
Ahmed Elsaftawy ◽  
Marwan Hassan ◽  
David Weaver ◽  
...  

Evaluating the two-phase flow parameters across tube bundles is crucial to the analysis of vibration excitation mechanisms. These parameters include the temporal and local variation of void fraction and phase redistribution. Understanding these two-phase parameters is essential to evaluating the stability threshold of tube bundle configurations. In this work, capacitance sensor probes were designed using finite element analysis to ensure high sensor sensitivity and optimum response. A simulation-based approach was used to calibrate and increase the accuracy of the void fraction measurement. The simulation results were used to scale the normalized capacitance and minimize the sensor uncertainty to ±5%. The sensor and required conditioning circuits were fabricated and tested for measuring the instantaneous void fraction in a horizontal triangular tube bundle array under both static and dynamic two-phase flow conditions. The static calibration of the sensor was able to reduce the uncertainty to ±3% while the sensor conditioning circuit was able to capture instantaneous void fraction signals with frequencies up to 2.5 kHz.


Author(s):  
Jiang Nai-bin ◽  
Gao Li-xia ◽  
Huang Xuan ◽  
Zang Feng-gang ◽  
Xiong Fu-rui

In steam generators and other heat exchangers, there are a lot of tube bundles subjected to two-phase cross-flow. The fluctuating pressure on tube bundle caused by turbulence can induce structural vibration. The experimental data from a U-tube bundle of steam generator in air-water flow loop are analyzed in this work. The different upper bounds of buffeting force are used to calculate the turbulence buffeting response of U-tubes, and the calculation results are compared with the experimental results. The upper bounds of buffeting force include one upper bound based on single-phase flow, and two upper bounds based on two-phase flow. It is shown that the upper bound based on single-phase flow seriously underestimated the turbulence excitation, the calculated vibration response is much less than the experimental measurement. On the other hand, the vibration response results calculated with the upper bounds based on two-phase flow are closer to the measured results under most circumstances.


2009 ◽  
Vol 131 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Feenstra ◽  
David S. Weaver ◽  
Tomomichi Nakamura

Laboratory experiments were conducted to determine the flow-induced vibration response and fluidelastic instability threshold of model heat exchanger tube bundles subjected to a cross-flow of refrigerant 11. Tube bundles were specially built with tubes cantilever-mounted on rectangular brass support bars so that the stiffness in the streamwise direction was about double that in the transverse direction. This was designed to simulate the tube dynamics in the U-bend region of a recirculating-type nuclear steam generator. Three model tube bundles were studied, one with a pitch ratio of 1.49 and two with a smaller pitch ratio of 1.33. The primary intent of the research was to improve our understanding of the flow-induced vibrations of heat exchanger tube arrays subjected to two-phase cross-flow. Of particular concern was to compare the effect of the asymmetric stiffness on the fluidelastic stability threshold with that of axisymmetric stiffness arrays tested most prominently in literature. The experimental results are analyzed and compared with existing data from literature using various definitions of two-phase fluid parameters. The fluidelastic stability thresholds of the present study agree well with results from previous studies for single-phase flow. In two-phase flow, the comparison of the stability data depends on the definition of two-phase flow velocity.


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