Rewetting of composite slab

The process of re-establishment of wetting of hot surface is of practical importance in chemical, metallurgical and nuclear industries. Rewetting is considered in emergency core cooling in nuclear reactors in the event of postulated loss of coolant accident (LOCA). This paper deals with numerical solution of the two-dimensional quasi-static conduction controlled rewetting of an infinite parallel sided composite slab assuming perfect contact is maintained at the interface. On the wetted side upstream of the quench front, a constant heat transfer coefficient is assumed. The downstream of quench front and unwetted side of slab are supposed to be adiabatic. The solution gives the quench front temperature as a function of various model parameters such as Peclet number, wet side Blot number, dimensionless thickness of slab and cladding to fuel ratio of thermal conductivities. The results show that for large values of rewetting velocities, the dimensionless rewetting temperature is unaffected by fuel properties for all values of Blot numbers. (author). 7 refs., 2 tabs., 1 fig