Experimental Study on Edge Blockage Accidents in a Narrow Rectangular Channel

Abstract

The blocked accident of plate fuel assembly is one of the serious accidents in the reactor. It will worsen the heat transfer capacity of the coolant and even affect the safe operation of the reactor. Therefore, Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) technology and the Laser Induced Fluorescence (LIF) technology are used in current paper to investigate the edge blockage accidents in a narrow rectangular channel with a continuous-wave laser and two high-speed cameras. During the experiments, the obstacle has great effect on the flow field and temperature field. It is found that large-scale vortex structure will be generated in the wake downstream of the obstacle. And where the vortices exist, the fluid temperature is also higher, which means that the vortices prevent the heat from escaping in time. Besides, the temperature distribution at different Re numbers is also analyzed. It can provide a validation for numerical simulations.