Study of heat and mass transfers in a spray for containment application: Analysis of the influence of the spray mass flow rate

During the course of a hypothetical accident in a nuclear power plant, spray might be activated in order to reduce static pressure in the containment. The IRSN has developed the TOSQAN experiment to give a better understanding of the heat and mass transfers between a spray and the surrounding confined gas. This article analyses the influence of the injected spray mass flow rate on the thermal-hydraulics of spray tests. The three tests compared in this article, to carry out this analysis, have the same boundary and initial conditions, except the spray mass flow rate ranges from 10 to 53 g s−1. First, the scenario of these three tests used for this analysis and their results are presented. Then, our analysis is focused on the inter-comparison of the thermal-hydraulic behavior induced by spray mass flow rate variations. This inter-comparison is divided into two parts: a global and a local one.