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ISSN Online: 2379-1748

ISBN Flash Drive: 978-1-56700-469-4

ISBN Online: 978-1-56700-470-0

Second Thermal and Fluids Engineering Conference
April, 2-5, 2017, Las Vegas, NV, USA

EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF PRESSURE DROP IN SILICON CARBIDE (SIC) FUEL ROD FOR PRESSURIZED WATER REACTOR

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DOI: 10.1615/TFEC2017.fna.018114

Abstract

The paper presents the experimental and numerical investigation of pressure drop in a single silicon carbide (SiC) fuel rod with three dimensional roughness in turbulent flow for Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR). The experimental friction factor for rough surface was compared with the smooth surface. The experimental setup consisted of a flow loop with the SiC fuel rod section. The pressure drop was measured over the length of the SiC rod which was used to calculate the friction factor. The results show that the friction factor increases 7.6% − 15.3% compared to the smooth surface over the Reynolds number ranges from 4.1×104 to 1.17times;105. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis using k-ω shear stress transport model was carried out to validate the experimental results using commercial ANSYS Fluent software. The meshing at the wall was refined such that the first node was placed within y+ < 1 from the wall. The numerical results from the CFD analysis suggest good agreement with the experimental results with a maximum deviation of ±8%. The same CFD analysis was extended by turning on the energy equations, with a constant heat flux applied at the rough surface. It is observed that the surface roughness enhances the heat transfer up to 26% at Re = 102436.