Pebble bed packing in prismatic containers

Highlights: • The essential part of ceramic breeder blankets is pebble beds. • The packing factor for blanket relevant cavities must be known. • Tomography experiments revealed details of packing arrangements. • Packing experiments confirm that reference packing factors will be achieved. -- Abstract: New analyses of previous tomography investigations show in detail void fraction fluctuations close to walls generated by regular pebble arrangements. Local packing factors within the pebble bed were determined for characteristic zones. These results are very helpful for the interpretation of the packing experiments performed with spherical pebbles in different kinds of Plexiglas containers dominated by flat walls. The packing factors for single-size pebbles in the containers with a piston on top are fairly independent of bed height unless the height to diameter ratio becomes less than 10. For the closed rectangular containers, the development of structured packings is rendered more difficult. However, for blanket relevant bed heights, both for orthosilicate and beryllium pebbles, the packing factors obtained which agree well with previously obtained reference values