Research on integral thermal-hydraulic test facilities

Integral thermal-hydraulic test facilities, which have been necessary experimental platforms during the development of nuclear safety technology, could not only test and validate performance of new designed system, but also provide experimental data for development and validation of nuclear safety analysis codes. Typical integral thermal-hydraulic test facilities in the world are studied in this paper, of which the design parameters, system arrangements and functions are emphatically discussed. The results show that those integral thermal-hydraulic test facilities differ with each other in parameter scope and simulation function. Basing the fact that each facility has its advantages and disadvantages, it is better to take more factors into consideration in design of new facility. What is more, the design scheme could be optimized with new measurement technology and analysis software. (authors)