Investigation on corium spreading over ceramic and concrete substrates in VULCANO VE-U7 experiment with moving particle semi-implicit method

The potential reasons for the corium spreading difference over inert ceramic and reactive concrete channels of VULCANO VE-U7 experiment are investigated using Moving Particle Semi-implicit (MPS) method. A new thermal contact resistance model has been developed for MPS so that influence of the subscale heat transfer between the melt/crust and the substrate on spreading can be considered. The results indicate that the spreading difference is not much influenced by heat loss of the melt to different substrates, but more likely due to gas bubbles in the concrete channel. The most likely responsible gas bubble effect could not be well identified with the single channel analysis, because it could not consider the inflow mass interactions at the stabilization pool. The double-channel analysis with such consideration indicated enhancement of the effective thermal conductivity of the melt as the key influence of the gas bubbles that led to the difference. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.