Critical Heat Flux Correlation for Advanced Pressurized Light Water Reactor Application

摘要

Many CHF-correlations have been developed for water cooled rod clusters representing typical PWR or BWR fuel element geometries with relative wide rod lattices. However the fuel elements of an Advanced Pressurized Water Reactor (APWR) have a tight fuel rod lattice, in view of increasing the fuel utilization. It was therefore decided to produce a new CHF-correlation valid for rod bundles with tight lattices. The already available WSC-2 correlation was chosen as a basis. The geometry dependent parameters of this correlation were determined again with the method of the root mean square fitting from the experimental data of the CHF-tests performed in the frame of the Light Water Breeder Reactor programme at the Bettis Laboratory. These tests include triangular array rod bundles with very tight lattices. Furthermore the effect of spiral spacer ribs was investigated on the basis of experimental data from the Columbia University. Application of the new CHF-correlation to conditions typical for an APWR shows that the predicted critical heat fluxes are much smaller than those calculated with the usual PWR-CHF-correlations, but they are higher than those predicted by the B+W-VPI+SU correlation. (ERA citation 08:007474)