Advances on the research on nonlinear phenomena in boiling natural circulation loop

The state-of-the-art of theoretical investigations on the flow oscillations that occur in a boiling natural circulation loop has been presented here. Motivation behind the work is to develop a high-fidelity model that is capable of predicting nature of flow instabilities more accurately. At the low pressures and low heat fluxes conditions, the major four types of instabilities may occur in boiling natural circulation loop depending on operating conditions: Flow excursion, Geysering instability, Flashing-induced instability and Type I density-wave oscillations. The characteristics of different instabilities as well as the effects of different operating and geometric parameters on them have been reviewed. The objective of this review is to gather the research findings on the nonlinear stability phenomena in various boiling flow channel systems over a period of several years. This review indicates that most of the theoretical predictions of amplitudes and periods of the sustained oscillations are carried out using two models, namely, homogeneous equilibrium model (HEM) (still debatable) and drift-flux model (DFM) (more realistic) and are validated by experimental findings. This review work on theoretical investigations presented in this paper indicates that there are enough scopes for improving mathematical formulations of the natural circulation boiling loop (NCBL) for thermohydraulic instabilities.