Subcooled boiling-induced vibration of a heater rod located between two metallic walls

The phenomenon that a heating structure vibrates itself due to the behavior of vapor bubbles generated under subcooled boiling has been known as “Subcooled Boiling-induced Vibration (SBIV)”. As one of such a heating structure, fuel assemblies for Boiling Water Reactors (BWR) are utilized in subcooled boiling of water, and those for Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR) may face unexpected subcooled boiling conditions in case of sudden drop of the system pressure or loss of water flow, though they are utilized in single phase of water under normal operating conditions. As studies on SBIV, some researchers have conducted demonstrative experiments with a partial array of fuel rods simulating the actual BWR fuel assembly in a flow test loop, which showed no significant influences of the SBIV to degrade the integrity of the fuel rods. In addition, in order to investigate the fundamental phenomenon of the SBIV, pool boiling experiments of the SBIV on a single heater rod were performed in other studies with a simplified apparatus of a water tank in laboratory size under atmospheric pressure. In the experiments, behavior of bubbles generated under various degree of subcooling were observed, and the acceleration of the SBIV of the heater rod was measured. The present study, as a series of the above experiments for the fundamental phenomenon of the SBIV, the two thin walls made of stainless steel were installed in parallel to interleave the heater rod with the gap distance of 1 mm or 3 mm to each of the two walls, which was expected to provide useful results to investigate effects of the parallel walls configuration to the SBIV of the heater rod. The results obtained in the experiments suggested that bubbles growing largely in the gap influenced on the SBIV of the heater rod, with the remarkable behavior such as slide of the large bubbles on the surface of the heater rod towards the open region, interference and coalescence between large bubbles.