Natural circulation boiling loops present a morecomplicated relationship between loop mass flow rate andheating power. Since Wallis and Hessley reportedbuoyancy bifurcation in 1961, extensive attention hasbeen paid to these loops from academic researcherstudying the complex interaction between heat transferand fluid flows in the loop. In general, the loop mass flowrate increases with increasing heating power in a lowpower region and decreases with increasing power in ahigh power domain; and thus a maximum loop mass flowrate also appears at an intermediate heating power.Ramos(1985) and Knaoni(1993) reported staticbifurcation phenomenon in two-phase natural circulation.Also, Lee and Lee(1991) and Yao Wei noted theexistence of multiple steady state flow rates at a givenpower, and considered the range of heat flux withmultiple solutions of flow rate to be statically unstable.
展开▼
