Thermohydraulic calculations in rectangular channels for RA-6 type reactors with transition regime

In August 2000 and within the framework of the RA-6 core conversion from high to low enrichment (20%), a preliminary analysis was performed to evaluate the maximum power that the reactor could operate with the new kernel without makeing substantial changes. This meant keeping intact, for example, the concrete shield of the pool and the nucleus inlet and outlet pipes embedded in the walls. Preliminary results indicated that for these boundary conditions a maximum power of about 3 MWt could be achieved. In August 2005 the project was resumed and new calculations performed taking as a starting point the ECBE plate fuel element(U3O8-Al). A core was developed with cooling channle widths of 2.6 mm for the control fuel elements and 2.7 mm for standard fuel elements. The thermo-hydraulic calculation puts in evidence that coolant flow into the core was in the transitional regime for the vast majority of configurations. While TERMIC code, used for thermo-hydraulic design, has been extensively tested and validated for use in research reactors under turbulent and laminar flows, this is not so for transition conditions. The transition regime is strongly dependent on conditions such as flow inlet characteristics, channel geometry, etc.. and therefore there are no reliable correlations for general use. For this reason we found it convenient to carry out experiments simulating the working conditions in order to adjust the code results with experimental data. In the present work we show the experimental results, the simulation of the experiences using the TERMIC code, and the adjustments made to the correlations used by the code so that it can be applied to the thermo-hydraulic design of the new core.