Non-intuitive bubble effects in reactor and containment technology

Most people know a lot about bubbles, including how they rise in liquids and the way they appear when the cap is removed from a bottle of carbonated beverage. A lot of bubble knowledge is obtained from bubbling air through water in aquariums to keep the fish alive and happy, or watching scuba divers feed the sharks in large glass tanks at the local zoo. But innocent bubbles can be sources of structural loadings and sometimes destructive fluid behavior. In fact, there are many non-intuitive effects associated with bubbles which have been discovered by experiments and analyses. It has been necessary to design various reactor and containment components in the nuclear energy industry to accommodate the fact that bubbles can expand like compressed springs, or oscillate, or collapse abruptly, and create structural loads. This paper describes several important phenomena associated with bubble action in nuclear reactor and containment systems and the associated loads exerted. An awareness of these effects can help to avoid unwelcome surprises in general thermal-hydraulic applications when a system is disturbed by bubble behavior. Major topics discussed include expanding and collapsing submerged bubbles, steam chugging and ringout, bubble shattering, surprising hot bubble action in a saturated pool, bubble effects on fluid-structure-interaction, waterhammer from collapsing bubble in pipes, and vapor bubble effects on sound speed in saturated mixtures