Containment studies facility: experiments and analytical studies

Containment Studies Facility (CSF) is a test facility has been set up at BARC for carrying out experiments related to nuclear reactor containment. It consists of a containment model and a pressure vessel (or PHTM vessel). Containment thermal hydraulic experiments were carried out in CSF for 50 bar and 75 bar blowdown conditions for simulating containment pressure and temperature transients following pipe break simulating LOCA/MSLB. Pressure, temperature and other transient parameters were recorded during the experiments. The experimental results were compared with outputs of modeling carried out using various codes like RELAP, ASTEC and CONTRAN etc. The details of the experimental and analytical studies conducted are presented in this paper. (author)