Study on sloshing motion in a liquid pool with non-spherical particles

Highlights: • New experiments on pool sloshing motion using non-spherical particles performed. • Regime boundary for non-spherical particles found at larger particle size. • Correction scheme successfully proposed to incorporate particle-shape effect. • Good predictions obtained for non-spherical & spherical particles using the scheme. -- Abstract: Investigations of the sloshing motion in molten pool with unmelted/refrozen core materials are crucial to improve the evaluation of severe accidents that are possibly encountered for a sodium-cooled fast reactor. Based on a great number of experiments mainly conducted with spherical particles, in our earlier work, three types of flow regimes (namely the bubble-impulsion dominant regime, the transitional regime and the bed-inertia dominant regime) were recognized and a regime map (original model) has been even established successfully to estimate the transformation of regimes for spherical particles at varied parametric conditions. In this article, motivated by further checking the impact of particle shape on the sloshing motion, a series of new experiments has been conducted using different non-spherical particles. It is recognized that compared to spherical particles, the regime boundary for experiments using non-spherical particles tends to emerge within a relatively bigger particle size. To predict the regime characteristics for non-spherical particles, a correction scheme which consists of modifications of the original model from several aspects is suggested. Through detailed analyses and discussion, we find that with the proposed correction scheme coupled, our developed model can provide satisfactory predictions on the transition of flow regimes for the pool sloshing motion with both non-spherical and spherical solid particles over our present scope of experimental conditions.