The Effect of the Channel Head on the Unsteady Pressure Pulsation Characteristics at the Inlet and Outlet of Reactor Coolant Pumps

Abstract

Abstract. In this paper, CFD approach was employed to analyse the inlet and outlet pressure pulsation characteristics of reactor coolant pumps with different inflows. The Reynoldsaveraged Naiver-Stokes equations with the k-ε turbulence model were solved by the computational fluid dynamics software CFX to conduct the steady and unsteady numerical simulation. The numerical results of the straight pipe and channel head were validated with experimental data for the heads at different flow coefficients. In the nominal flow rate, the head of the pump with the channel head decreases by 1.19% when compared to the straight pipe. The channel head induces the inlet flow non-uniform, and the non-uniformity of the inflow induces the outlet flow of the pump with channel head different from that of the straight pipe. Meanwhile, the pressure pulsation signals are analysed using RMS, Standard Deviation and Peak-to-Peak Value method. At the points of the inlet and outlet, the pressure pulsation characteristics between the channel head and straight pipe are compared, and the difference is obviously. It is evident that the two different inflows of channel head and straight pipe have significant effect on the pump unsteady pressure pulsation. Finally, it is expected that the effects of non-uniform inflow on the pump performance and unsteady pressure pulsation are absolutely different from the uniform inflow. It is very important to provide accurate input conditions for the design and safety of the reactor.

Performance evaluation and flow analysis of two-cylinder triangular rotor pump based on experiment and numerical simulation

“…Mengtian Li, Shucai Li, Xiao Zhang, Qingsong Zhang, Wang and Hao, Journal of Advanced Mechanical Design, Systems, and Manufacturing, Vol.13, No.1 (2019) Under different n, the p and T fluctuation degrees can be expressed by non-uniform coefficients p and T (Ismail et al, 2015;Kim et al, 2015;Long et al, 2016) :…”