Hydrodynamics characteristics of non-uniform inflow in reactor coolant pump based on time-resolved tomographic particle image velocimetry

Non-uniform inflow at the inlet of a reactor coolant pump generates performance variations, such as in the head, efficiency, cavitation, and vibrations. The three-dimensional velocity and pressure for non-uniform inflow are reconstructed via time-resolved tomographic particle image velocimetry to evaluate its effect on the reactor coolant pump. Five volume velocity fields were reconstructed through the multiplicative algebraic reconstruction technique, which constitutes the entire non-uniform flow field. The statistics of the velocity fields were used to study the non-uniform inflow characteristics. The non-uniform inflow contains two large-scale vortices in the form of counter-rotating vortex pairs. The influence of non-uniform inflow on the performance of the pump may be caused by the non-uniform pressure field. For power fluctuations during reactor operations, this non-uniform pressure distribution may generate a low-pressure region on the impeller, which induces cavitation. The non-uniform inflow shown by inhomogeneous vectors was evaluated statistically through the turbulent kinetic energy, which represents the velocity variance in each direction. For a constant head, the non-uniformity of the flow field increased with the flow rate, and the scale of small-scale turbulent vortices decreased. With proper orthogonal decomposition analysis, 90% of the energy region and flow structures were dominated by the previous 412 modes. Furthermore, the temporal modes 1, 2, 3, 100, 200, and 400 show that the frequency of large-scale eddy turnover was about 6.6-13.2 Hz. However, the large-scale eddy could be characterized within the first mode of the spatial distribution.

Automated summary

This study investigates the effect of non-uniform inflow on the performance of a reactor coolant pump. It is found that non-uniform inflow leads to variations in head, efficiency, cavitation, and vibrations, which may be caused by the non-uniform pressure field. Additionally, the study reveals the presence of two large-scale vortices in the non-uniform inflow and analyzes the characteristics and changes in non-uniformity using statistical methods.