Enhancement of Turbulent Heat Transfer of the Cooling System in Nuclear Reactor by Large Scale Vortex Generation

Experimental and computational studies were carried out to investigate the turbulent heat transfer enhancement of the cooling system in nuclear reactor by large scale vortex generation. The large scale vortex motion was generated by rearranging the inclination angels of mixing vanes to the coordinate direction. Axial development of mean and turbulent velocities in the subchannels were measured by the 2-color LDV system. Eddy diffusivity concept based on $\kappa{-}\varepsilon$ model was employed to calculate the turbulent heat and momentum transfers in the subchannel. The turbulences generated by split mixing vanes has small length scales so that they maintain only about $10D_H$ after the spacer grid. On the other hand, the turbulences generated by the large scale vortex motions continue longer and remain up to $25D_H$ after the spacer grid.