An investigation of steam-water countercurrent flow model in TRACE

This paper studies the countercurrent flow model in the TRACE code version 5.0. Steam and water are chosen as the working fluids that flow counter-currently in a circular pipe. Three types of countercurrent flow models, including the Wallis, Kutateladze and Bankoff correlations, are investigated. A single tube model was built to study the Wallis and the Kutateladze correlations, and the variable in the calculation model is the pipe diameter. A perforated plate model was constructed to study the Bankoff correlation, and the variables include the pipe and hole diameters, the number of holes and the plate thickness. The hydraulic diameter of the pipe varied from 2.5 to 200 mm for the tests on the Wallis and Kutateladze correlations. To validate the Bankoff correlation, the hydraulic diameter of the pipe was varied from 50 to 200 mm, and the plate thickness varied from 10 to 40 mm. In this study we validate the countercurrent flow model in the TRACE code, and comment on the application ranges of the three correlations.