Distribution of liquid sodium in the inlet plenum of steam generator in a Fast Breeder Reactor

Experimental and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) investigations have been carried out on a 1/5th scale model of the inlet plenum of steam generator (SG) used in the Fast Breeder Reactor (FBR) technology. The distribution of liquid sodium in the inlet plenum of the steam generator strongly affects the thermal as well as mechanical performance of the steam generator. In the present work, flow distribution in a scaled down model has been investigated. Various strategies adopted for obtaining uniform flow distribution have been evaluated. Experiments have been conducted to measure the axial and radial velocity distributions using Ultrasonic Velocity Profiler (UVP) under a variety of geometries. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) studies have been carried out for various geometries. On the basis of these experiments and CFD simulations, various flow distribution devices have been compared.