Experimental investigation of local two-phase flow parameters of a subcooled boiling flow in an annulus

As a series of subcooling boiling flow tests, local two-phase flow parameters were obtained at SUBO (subcooled boiling) test facility under steam–water flow conditions. The test section is a vertical annulus of which the axial length is 4.165 m with a heater rod at the center of a channel. The inner and outer diameters of the test section and the heater rod are 35.5 mm and 9.98 mm, respectively. The test was performed by a two-stage approach. Stage-I for the measurement of local bubble parameters has been already done (Yun et al., 2009). The present work focused on the stage-II test for the measurement of local liquid parameters such as a local liquid velocity and a liquid temperature for a given flow condition of stage-I. A total of six test cases were chosen by following the test matrix of stage-I. The flow conditions are in the range of the heat flux of 370–563 kW/m2, mass flux of 1110–2100 kg/(m2 s) and inlet subcooling of 19–31 °C at pressure condition of 0.15–0.2 MPa. From the test, local liquid parameters were measured at 6 elevations along the test section and 11 radial locations of each elevation in addition to the previously obtained local void fraction, interfacial area concentration, Sauter mean diameter and bubble velocity. The present subcooled boiling (SUBO) data completes a data set for use as a benchmark, validation and model development of the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes or existing safety analysis codes.