Stability Behavior of Single-Phase Natural Circulation Loop

Abstract

The circulating fluid in natural circulation loops would absorb heat from the hot zone (source) and will transport it to the cold zone (sink) without using of any mechanical pumps or other devices. The fluid density differences in hot and cold zones would lead buoyancy force which is introduced as the body force for the loop. By introducing the one-dimensional conservation equations; mass, momentum and energy in the loop and applying the perturbation method, or linear stability theory, would help us to study the stability of the rectangular natural circulation loop. The conservation equations in transient form were solved using the finite difference method. The results obtained from the linear and nonlinear stability studies would be compared with the experimental data of DITEC loop (LOOP#1) obtained at the University of Genova and with other suitable data in the literature.