RBHT Steam Cooling and Droplet Injection Pre-Test Analysis Using COBRA-TF

The droplet injection experiments to be performed in a 7 × 7 rod bundle heat transfer test facility are being simulated using an advanced thermal hydraulics computer code called COBRA-TF. A current version of the code, which provides a three-dimensional, two-fluid, three-field representation of the two-phase flow, is modified to facilitate the simulation of the droplet field produced by the injection system in the test facility. The liquid phase is split into a continuous liquid field and droplet field where a separate momentum and mass equation is solved for each field, with the effects of spacer grids being properly accounted for. Pre-test analyses using the modified COBRA-TF code have been conducted for different injection conditions. Results indicate that there are specific ranges of conditions that can be simulated within the facility constraints to provide for validation of the dispersed flow film boiling models. The numerical results also show important effects of the spacer grids on the local heat transfer in the dispersed flow film boiling regime.