An Experimental Study on the Heat Focusing of the Metallic layer in a Severe Accident

By flooding the reactor cavity that surrounds the vessel, significant energy can be removed from relocated corium materials through the vessel wall. The aim of this study is to investigate the heat focusing depending on the aspect ratios and heat transfer characteristic of upper boundary for applications related to severe accident phenomena. Experiments were carried out for Rayleigh numbers and aspect ratio in the range of 8.49x10⁷-5.49x10⁹, 0.128-0.512 respectively. Also, the conditions of the top wall and the side wall are considered: (a) top plate cooling, side wall adiabatic, (b) top plate adiabatic, side wall cooling, (c) both walls cooling. In order to achieve high Rayleigh numbers, the heat transfer experiments were replaced by mass transfer experiments based on heat and mass transfer analogy concept. A sulfuric acid-copper sulfate (H₂SO₄-CuSO₄) electroplating system was adopted as the mass transfer system.An experimental study was performed to investigate the focusing effect appeared in the metallic layer in a severe accident condition. Mass transfer experiments, based on the analogy concept, carried out in order to achieve high Rayleigh number. The height of the side wall was varied for three different cooling conditions: top only, side only, and both top and side. The experimental results agreed well with the Rayleigh-Benard convection correlations of Dropkin and Somerscales and Globe and Dropkin. The test results for the three configurations (only top cooling, only side wall cooling and both walls cooling) presented that the heat transfer on side wall cooling condition without top cooling is biggest. Also, the heat transfer was enhanced by decreasing the aspect ratio (H/R)