Peculiarities of natural convective heat removal from complex pools

Considerable sensitivities are investigated in using natural convection for cooling large pools. Such a flow occurred in a sump cooling concept for a water cooled reactor. The related SUCOS model experiments were analyzed by means of the FLUTAN code. The numerical interpretations show, the natural convection in large pools is strongly influenced by local thermal disturbances, either due to structures in the fluid domain, or by bounding structures interacting thermally with the fluid. These experiment specific disturbances must be recorded in the numerical model in order to achieve adequate simulations of the heat transport. Some geometric imperfections of horizontal coolers or heaters could also have tremendous influences. As a consequence, not only the numerical model has to record all relevant phenomena as realistic as possible, but also the model experiment. (author)