Supercritical flow stability in horizontal channels

An analytical study of supercritical flow instability in two horizontal parallel channels is reported herein—a topic that would be of immense value to new reactor designs that propose to use supercritical light water on the primary side. The finding is that supercritical flow instability in horizontal channels is driven primarily by the state property variation of density with enthalpy; in particular, the second derivative of density with enthalpy is a dominant term for the onset of flow oscillations in horizontal flow.