Experimental Study on Liquid Film Dryout Under Oscillatory Flow Conditions

The use of high power density core is one of the promising ways to improve economic efficiency of advanced boiling water reactors. It is however known that in boiling two-phase flows, an increase in power density commonly reduces the margin to the onset of unanticipated flow instability. Hence, in the development of a boiling water reactor of high power density core, ability to predict the occurrence of boiling transition is considered indispensable even when the coolant flow rate is not in the steady state. In the present work, sinusoidal oscillation was applied to the inlet mass flux and the experimental measurement of the critical heat flux was carried out under flow oscillation conditions. It was shown that the critical heat flux decreases monotonically with increased values of oscillation amplitude and oscillation period. These results are consistent with experimental data reported by previous investigators. A simple theory was then proposed to estimate the critical heat flux in oscillatory flow condition. Considering the application to the advanced boiling water reactors, the triggering mechanism of the critical heat flux condition is supposed to be the liquid film dryout in annular two-phase flow regime of high vapor quality. Under the flow oscillation condition, it is expected that long waves are formed on a liquid film due to the time variation of inlet mass flux. Assuming that the wave evolution within a boiling channel is influential in the occurrence of the local dryout of a liquid film, an available nonlinear wave theory was applied to the estimation of critical heat flux under the flow oscillation condition. It was demonstrated that the critical heat fluxes measured under the oscillatory conditions agree with the proposed theory fairly well.