Experimental Investigation of the Subchannel Axial Pressure Drop and Hydraulic Characteristics of a 61-Pin Wire Wrapped Rod Bundle

Author(s):  
Craig Menezes ◽  
Rodolfo Vaghetto ◽  
Yassin A. Hassan

Abstract Wire-wrapped hexagonal fuel bundles have been extensively investigated due to their enhanced heat transfer and flow characteristics. Experimental measurements are important to study the thermal-hydraulic behavior of such assemblies and to validate and improve the predicting capabilities of specialized correlations and computational tools. Presently, very limited experimental data is available on the local subchannel pressure drop. Experimental measurements of subchannel pressure drop were conducted in a 61-pin wire-wrapped rod bundle replica, for Reynolds numbers between 190 and 22,000. Specialized instrumented rods were utilized to measure the local pressure drop and estimate the subchannels' friction factor. Three interior subchannels, one edge subchannel and one corner subchannel were selected to study the effects of location and flow regimes on the friction factor and hydraulic behavior. The transition boundaries from laminar to transitions regimes, and from transition to turbulent regimes were estimated for the subchannels analyzed. The results were found in agreement with the predictions of the Upgraded Cheng and Todreas Detailed Correlation (UCTD). The results of the experimental campaign provided a better understanding of hydraulic behavior of the subchannels of wire-wrapped bundles, in relation to its geometrical features

2010 ◽  
Vol 132 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrique Stel ◽  
Rigoberto E. M. Morales ◽  
Admilson T. Franco ◽  
Silvio L. M. Junqueira ◽  
Raul H. Erthal ◽  
...  

This article describes a numerical and experimental investigation of turbulent flow in pipes with periodic “d-type” corrugations. Four geometric configurations of d-type corrugated surfaces with different groove heights and lengths are evaluated, and calculations for Reynolds numbers ranging from 5000 to 100,000 are performed. The numerical analysis is carried out using computational fluid dynamics, and two turbulence models are considered: the two-equation, low-Reynolds-number Chen–Kim k-ε turbulence model, for which several flow properties such as friction factor, Reynolds stress, and turbulence kinetic energy are computed, and the algebraic LVEL model, used only to compute the friction factors and a velocity magnitude profile for comparison. An experimental loop is designed to perform pressure-drop measurements of turbulent water flow in corrugated pipes for the different geometric configurations. Pressure-drop values are correlated with the friction factor to validate the numerical results. These show that, in general, the magnitudes of all the flow quantities analyzed increase near the corrugated wall and that this increase tends to be more significant for higher Reynolds numbers as well as for larger grooves. According to previous studies, these results may be related to enhanced momentum transfer between the groove and core flow as the Reynolds number and groove length increase. Numerical friction factors for both the Chen–Kim k-ε and LVEL turbulence models show good agreement with the experimental measurements.


Author(s):  
Jian Pu ◽  
Zhaoqing Ke ◽  
Jianhua Wang ◽  
Lei Wang ◽  
Hongde You

This paper presents an experimental investigation on the characteristics of the fluid flow within an entire coolant channel of a low pressure (LP) turbine blade. The serpentine channel, which keeps realistic blade geometry, consists of three passes connected by a 180° sharp bend and a semi-round bend, 2 tip exits and 25 trailing edge exits. The mean velocity fields within several typical cross sections were captured using a particle image velocimetry (PIV) system. Pressure and flow rate at each exit were determined through the measurements of local static pressure and volume flow rate. To optimize the design of LP turbine blade coolant channels, the effect of tip ejection ratio (ER) from 180° sharp bend on the flow characteristics in the coolant channel were experimentally investigated at a series of inlet Reynolds numbers from 25,000 to 50,000. A complex flow pattern, which is different from the previous investigations conducted by a simplified square or rectangular two-pass U-channel, is exhibited from the PIV results. This experimental investigation indicated that: a) in the main flow direction, the regions of separation bubble and flow impingement increase in size with a decrease of the ER; b) the shape, intensity and position of the secondary vortices are changed by the ER; c) the mass flow ratio of each exit to inlet is not sensitive to the inlet Reynolds number; d) the increase of the ER reduces the mass flow ratio through each trailing edge exit to the extent of about 23–28% of the ER = 0 reference under the condition that the tip exit located at 180° bend is full open; e) the pressure drop through the entire coolant channel decreases with an increase in the ER and inlet Reynolds number, and a reduction about 35–40% of the non-dimensional pressure drop is observed at different inlet Reynolds numbers, under the condition that the tip exit located at 180° bend is full open.


Author(s):  
Sam Ghazi-Hesami ◽  
Dylan Wise ◽  
Keith Taylor ◽  
Peter Ireland ◽  
Étienne Robert

Abstract Turbulators are a promising avenue to enhance heat transfer in a wide variety of applications. An experimental and numerical investigation of heat transfer and pressure drop of a broken V (chevron) turbulator is presented at Reynolds numbers ranging from approximately 300,000 to 900,000 in a rectangular channel with an aspect ratio (width/height) of 1.29. The rib height is 3% of the channel hydraulic diameter while the rib spacing to rib height ratio is fixed at 10. Heat transfer measurements are performed on the flat surface between ribs using transient liquid crystal thermography. The experimental results reveal a significant increase of the heat transfer and friction factor of the ribbed surface compared to a smooth channel. Both parameters increase with Reynolds number, with a heat transfer enhancement ratio of up to 2.15 (relative to a smooth channel) and a friction factor ratio of up to 6.32 over the investigated Reynolds number range. Complementary CFD RANS (Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes) simulations are performed with the κ-ω SST turbulence model in ANSYS Fluent® 17.1, and the numerical estimates are compared against the experimental data. The results reveal that the discrepancy between the experimentally measured area averaged Nusselt number and the numerical estimates increases from approximately 3% to 13% with increasing Reynolds number from 339,000 to 917,000. The numerical estimates indicate turbulators enhance heat transfer by interrupting the boundary layer as well as increasing near surface turbulent kinetic energy and mixing.


2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen E. Turner ◽  
Hongwei Sun ◽  
Mohammad Faghri ◽  
Otto J. Gregory

Abstract This paper presents an experimental investigation on nitrogen and helium flow through microchannels etched in silicon with hydraulic diameters between 10 and 40 microns, and Reynolds numbers ranging from 0.3 to 600. The objectives of this research are (1) to fabricate microchannels with uniform surface roughness and local pressure measurement; (2) to determine the friction factor within the locally fully developed region of the microchannel; and (3) to evaluate the effect of surface roughness on momentum transfer by comparison with smooth microchannels. The friction factor results are presented as the product of friction factor and Reynolds number plotted against Reynolds number. The following conclusions have been reached in the present investigation: (1) microchannels with uniform corrugated surfaces can be fabricated using standard photolithographic processes; and (2) surface features with low aspect ratios of height to width have little effect on the friction factor for laminar flow in microchannels.


Author(s):  
Chaoxing Yan ◽  
Changqi Yan ◽  
Licheng Sun ◽  
Yang Wang

Experimental study on resistance of air-water two-phase flow in a vertical 3 × 3 rod bundle was carried out under normal temperature and pressure. The rod diameter and pitch were 8 mm and 11 mm, respectively. The ranges of gas and liquid superficial velocity were 0.013∼3.763 m/s and 0.076∼1.792 m/s, respectively. The result indicated that the existing correlations for calculating frictional coefficient in the rod bundle and local resistance coefficient could not give favorable predictions on the single-phase experimental data. For the case of two-phase flow, eight correlations for calculating two-phase equivalent viscosity poorly predicted the frictional pressure drop, with the mean absolute errors around 60%. Meanwhile, the eight classical two-phase viscosity formulae were evaluated against the local pressure drop at spacer grid. It is shown that Dukler model predicted the experimental data well in the range of Rel<9000 while McAdams correlation was the best for Rel⩾9000. For all the experimental data, Dukler model provided the best prediction with MRE of 29.03%. Furthermore, approaches to calculate two-phase frictional pressure drop and local resistance were proposed by considering mass quality, two-phase Reynolds number and densities in homogenous flow model, resulting in a good agreement with the experimental data.


2017 ◽  
Vol 139 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Mohammadi ◽  
Ali Koşar

This study focuses on microheat sinks with different staggered arrangements of micro pin fins (MPFs). A rectangular microchannel with the dimensions of 5000 × 1500 × 100 μm3 (l′ × w′ × h′) was considered for all the configurations while different MPF diameters, height over diameter ratio (H/D), and longitudinal and transversal pitch ratios (SL/D and ST/D) were considered in different arrangements. Using the ansys fluent 14.5 commercial software, the simulations were done for different Reynolds numbers between 20 and 160. A constant heat flux of 30 W/cm2 was applied through the bottom heating section. The performances of the microheat sinks were evaluated using design parameters, namely pressure drop, friction factor, Nusselt number, and thermal-hydraulic performance index (TPI). The effect of each geometrical parameter as well as wake-pin fin interaction patterns were carefully studied using the streamline patterns and temperature profiles of each configuration. The results reveal a great dependency of trends in pressure drops and Nusselt numbers on the wake region lengths as well as the local velocity and pressure gradients. Moreover, the wake region lengths mostly contribute to the increase in obtained pressure drop and Nusselt number with Reynolds number. Although an increase in the H/D and SL/D ratios results in an increase and a decrease in pressure drop, respectively, the effect on the Nusselt number depends on other geometrical parameters and Reynolds number. A larger ST/D ratio generally results in a decrease in the pressure drop and Nusselt number. Finally, while the friction factor decreases with Reynolds number, two different trends are seen for the TPI values of configurations with the H/D ratio of 1 and 2 (D = 100 and 50 μm). While the trend in the TPIs is increasing for Reynolds numbers between 20 and 40, it reverses for higher Reynolds numbers with a steeper slope in the configurations with the ST/D ratio of 1.5.


2019 ◽  
Vol 141 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Du ◽  
Lei Luo ◽  
Songtao Wang ◽  
Jian Liu ◽  
Bengt Sunden

Abstract Heat transfer characteristics in a latticework duct with various sidewalls are numerically investigated. The crossing angle is 90 deg and the number of subchannels is eleven on both the pressure side and suction side for each latticework duct. The thickness of the ribs is 8 mm and the distance between adjacent ribs is 24 mm. The investigation is conducted for various Reynolds numbers (11,000 to 55,000) and six different sidewalls. Flow structure, pressure drop, and heat transfer characteristics are analyzed. Results revealed that the sidewall has significant effects on heat transfer and flow structure. The triangle-shaped sidewall provides the highest Nusselt number accompanied by the highest friction factor. The sidewall with a slot shows the lowest friction factor and Nusselt number. An increased slot width decreased the Nusselt number and friction factor simultaneously.


1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen E. Turner ◽  
Hongwei Sun ◽  
Mohammad Faghri ◽  
Otto J. Gregory

Abstract This paper presents an experimental investigation on nitrogen and helium flow in microchannels etched in silicon with hydraulic diameters of 9.7, 19.6, and 46.6 μm, and Reynolds numbers ranging from 0. 2 to 1000. The objectives of this research are (1) to measure the pressure distribution along the length of a microchannel; and (2) to determine the friction factor within the fully developed region of the microchannel. The pressure distribution is presented as absolute local pressure plotted against the distance from the microchannel inlet. The friction factor results are presented as the product of friction factor and Reynolds number plotted against Reynolds number with the outlet Knudsen number, Kn, as a curve parameter. The following conclusions have been reached in the present investigation: (1) Pressure losses at the microchannel entrance can be significant; (2) the product, f*Re, when measured sufficiently far away from the entrance and exit is a constant in the laminar flow region; and (3) the friction factor decreases as the Knudsen number increases.


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