Improvement of the Critical Heat Flux models of COBRA-TF and Assessment against the Post-Dryout Experiments Performed at the Royal Institute of Technology

Abarca Giménez Agustín, Miró Herrero Rafael, Barrachina Celda Teresa María, Verdú Martín Gumersindo Jesús

2014

Improvement of the Critical Heat Flux models of COBRA-TF and Assessment against the Post-Dryout Experiments Performed at the Royal Institute of Technology

The Critical Heat Flux (CHF) is the thermal limit at which the boiling regime change during heating, at this point the vapor bubbles abruptly form a film on the heating surface that thermally insulates the heater from the liquid. Due to the abrupt increasing in cladding temperatures that took place when the CHF is reached, it is an important safety parameter for the thermal design of Boiling Water Reactors (BWR) and their fuel assemblies. Owing the complexity of the physical mechanisms of the CHF, there are a large number of correlations to predict the CHF, but each one having a narrow range of validity.