Theoretical investigations on two-phase ow instability in parallel

channels under axial non-uniform heating

Xiaodong Lu
a
, Yingwei Wu
a,
, Linglan Zhou
b
, Wenxi Tian
a
, Guanghui Su
a
, Suizheng Qiu
a
, Hong Zhang
b
a
School of Nuclear Science and Technology, Xian Jiaotong University, Xian, Shaanxi 710049, PR China
b
Science and Technology on Reactor System Design Technology Laboratory, Nuclear Power Institute of China, Chengdu, Sichuan 610041, PR China
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 2 April 2013
Received in revised form 16 July 2013
Accepted 19 July 2013
Keywords:
Two-phase ow instability
Parallel channels
Axial uniform heating
Three-dimensional instability space
a b s t r a c t
Two-phase ow instability in parallel channels heated by axial non-uniform heat ux has been theoret-
ically studied in this paper. The system control equations of parallel channels were established based on
the homogeneous ow model in two-phase region. Semi-implicit nite-difference scheme and staggered
mesh method were used to discretize the equations, and the difference equations were solved by chasing
method. Cosine, bottom-peaked and top-peaked heat uxes were used to study the inuence of non-uni-
form heating on two-phase ow instability of the parallel channels system. The marginal stability bound-
aries (MSB) of parallel channels and three-dimensional instability spaces (or instability reefs) under
different heat ux conditions have been obtained. Compared with axial uniform heating, axial non-uni-
form heating will affect the system stability. Cosine and bottom-peaked heat uxes can destabilize the
system stability in high inlet subcooling region, while the opposite effect can be found in low inlet sub-
cooling region. However, top-peaked heat ux can enhance the system stability in the whole region. In
addition, for cosine heat ux, increasing the system pressure or inlet resistance coefcient can strengthen
the system stability, and increasing the heating power will destabilize the system stability. The inuence
of inlet subcooling number on the system stability is multi-valued under cosine heat ux.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The phenomenon of two-phase ow instability has been ob-
served in many industrial domains like refrigeration systems,
steam generators, boiling water reactors and reboilers. It has very
adverse inuences on thermalhydraulic system, since the oscilla-
tions of the mass ow rate and system pressure induced by two-
phase ow instability can cause structural vibrations of compo-
nents, problems of system control, transient burn-out of the heat
transfer surface and degradation of the heat transfer performance.
It is obvious that the ow instabilities must be avoided and there
should be an adequate margin to ensure the system stability. Flow
instability plays an important role in water-cooled and water-
moderated nuclear reactors. Therefore, predicting the thresholds
of ow instabilities is an important work in the design and opera-
tion of nuclear reactors. In the past few decades, a considerable
amount of numerical and experimental investigations on the
two-phase owinstability have been carried out all over the world.
After the two-phase ow instability was introduced by Ledin-
egg (1938), plenty of subsequent researches (Boure et al., 1973; La-
hey, 1980; Su et al., 2002; Papini et al., 2012) on the two-phase
ow instability in heating channel system have been conducted.
In recent years, the two-phase ow instability in parallel channels
has attracted extensive attention since it is particularly difcult to
be detected. In parallel channels system, an interaction between
the channels can be established due to common boundary condi-
tions. It is well known that the density wave oscillation (DWO)
in parallel channels occurs when the slope of the system pres-
sure-drop versus ow rate curve is positive. When one channel is
disturbed, the inlet velocity of this channel is reduced which
resulting in a decrease of the pressure-drop in this channel. After
a time t, which is the time taken by a particle to reach the outlet
of the channel, the inlet velocity will increase because of the con-
stant pressure-drop boundary. An increased inlet velocity in turn
causes the residence time of the particle to go up and a lesser pres-
sure-drop. When the particle reaches the outlet of the channel, a
decrease in inlet velocity will be caused and this starts the cycle
again. At the same time, an opposite behavior can be observed in
another channel for common boundary conditions. Finally, the
oscillation of the mass ow between parallel channels is triggered,
while the total mass ow of the system remains constant. There
are two general approaches to analyze the two-phase owinstabil-
ity: frequency domain analysis method and time domain analysis
method. For the frequency domain (Lahey and Moody, 1977;
Fukuda, 1979), the system stability is evaluated with classic
control-theory techniques in which the transfer functions are
0306-4549/$ - see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anucene.2013.07.030

Corresponding author.
E-mail address: wyw810@mail.xjtu.edu.cn (Y. Wu).
Annals of Nuclear Energy 63 (2014) 7582
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obtained from linearization and Laplace-transformation of the gov-
erning equations. However, some nonlinear problems cant be
solved by the frequency domain analysis method, since it omits
some nonlinear information. The two-phase ow instability in par-
allel channels is a nonlinear problem. Hence, the models built in
time domain are applied to analyze the two-phase ow instability.
0D analysis models (Munoz-Cobo et al., 2002; Schlichting et al.,
2010) based on the analytical integration of conservation equa-
tions in the computing region have been built. In addition, more
complex but accurate 1D analysis methods have been developed
by some researches (Lee and Pan, 1999; Guo et al., 2008b; Zhang
et al., 2009) to study the stability of multiple-parallels system
using suited numerical solution techniques (nite differences, -
nite volumes or nite elements).
In addition, modern methods of nonlinear dynamics were
developed by Dokhane et al. (2005, 2007) and Rizwan-Uddin
(2006) to investigate the stability analysis of boiling water reactors
(BWRs). In their studies, a reduced order model in conjunction
with the bifurcation code BIFDD was used to perform the stability
and semi-analytical bifurcation analyses of BWRs. Lange et al.
(2011) have made great achievements and they developed a
RAMROM method to study the nonlinear stability analysis of
BWRs, where RAM is a synonym for system code and ROM stands
for a reduced order model.
Unfortunately, most of them mentioned above have made a
hypothesis that the axial heat ux prole on the parallel channels
is uniform. In fact, the axial heat ux of fuel channels in the reactor
is non-uniform. Hence, it is unsuitable to use the uniform heat ux
to analyze the system stability in the reactor cores. Some experi-
mental and numerical works have been carried out on two-phase
ow instability under cosine heat ux. Djikam and Sluiter (1971)
found that cosine heat ux could stabilize the ow, while Bergles
(1976) pointed out that cosine heat ux had a destabilizing effect.
Dutta and Doshi (2008) have studied the effect of the axial heat
prole on different BWRs and found that a sinusoidal axial heat
prole enlarged the stability region. Contradictory results have
been obtained by these reports. Therefore, it is necessary to go fur-
ther on the study of this problem. In this paper, semi-implicit -
nite-difference scheme and staggered mesh method were
adopted to analyze the inuence of non-uniform heating on two-
phase ow instability in parallel channels. Different axial heat ux
proles such as cosine and bottom-peaked heat uxes have been
studied. The marginal stability boundary (MSB) and the three-
dimensional instability space have been obtained under different
operation conditions.
2. Theoretical model and numerical method
For our studies, the parallel channels system consists of two
plenums and two parallel channels as shown in Fig. 1. The two-
phase ow instability in parallel channels will be disturbed by
the riser section and inlet section of the channel (Guo et al.,
2008a). In order to study the effect of axial non-uniform heating
on two-phase ow instability alone, the riser and inlet sections
are neglected in this paper. The heating section is composed of
two parts which are single-phase section and two-phase section,
respectively. The assumptions made in this study are as follows:
(1) The homogeneous ow model is used for two-phase ow
(2) The uid is in subcooled state at the channel inlet.
(3) The two phases are in thermodynamic equilibrium.
(4) One-dimensional conservation equations in the axial (z)
direction are used.
(5) Only bulk boiling is considered and subcooled boiling is
neglected.
Nomenclature
A cross-sectional area of the control volume (m
2
) or ma-
trix
B matrix
D
e
equivalent diameter (m)
f uid or friction pressure drop coefcient
g vapor or gravitational acceleration (m/s
2
)
h enthalpy (kJ/kg)
k loss coefcient
N
pch
phase change number, N
pch
Q=Wv
fg
=h
fg
v
f

N
sub
inlet subcooling number, N
sub
Dh
in
=h
fg
v
fg
=v
f

p pressure (Pa)
Q heating power (W)
t time (s)
u velocity (m/s)
W mass ow rate (kg/s)
z axial coordinate
Greek symbols
q density (kg/m
3
)
q
tp
mixture density of two-phase uid
l dynamic viscosity (Pas)
/
2
two-phase multiplier coefcient
D difference
Subscripts
i size class
1u single-phase region
2u two-phase region
Heating section
LH
Single phase zone
Two phase zone
LN
Lower Plenum
Upper Plenum
Fig. 1. Schematic of parallel channels system.
76 X. Lu et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 63 (2014) 7582
2.1. Theoretical model
The thermal hydraulic model is established based on a set of
eld and constitutive equations and boundary conditions. By
adopting a homogeneous ow model, the basic one-dimensional
conservation equations for both single- and two-phase regions
and the state equation can be written as follows:
Mass conservation equation:
@q
@t

@qu
@z
0 1
Momentum conservation equation:
@qu
@t

@qu
2

@z

@p
@z

f
D
e

N
i1
k
i
dz z
i

_ _
qu
2
2
qg 2
Energy conservation equation:
@qh
@t

@quh
@z

q
l
A

@p
@t
3
State equation:
q qp; h 4
where f is friction pressure drop coefcient, D
e
is equivalent diam-
eter (m), k
i
is loss coefcient, d is Diracs delta function, q
l
is linear
heating power (W/m), A is cross-sectional area of the control vol-
ume (m
2
).
The derivative of the state equation with respect to time t can
be written in the form:
@q
@t

@q
@h
@h
@t

@q
@p
@p
@t
5
Substituting Eq. (5) into Eqs. (1) and (3), one can obtain:
@q
@h
@h
@t

@q
@p
@p
@t

@
@z
qu 0 6
h
@q
@h
q
_ _
@h
@t
h
@q
@p
1
_ _
@p
@t

@
@z
quh
q
l
A
7
In order to solve the momentum conservation equation, the
friction pressure drop coefcient f consisting of the single-phase
friction pressure drop coefcient f
1u
and the two-phase friction
pressure drop coefcient f
2u
and two-phase multiplier coefcient
/
2
should be calculated by appropriate empirical equations. In this
study, the f
1u
in the single-phase region can be obtained from Ta-
ble 1, and the f
2u
in two-phase region is dened as:
f
2u
f
1u

q
tp
q
f
/
2
8
MaAdams model is used to calculate the two-phase multiplier
coefcient /
2
which is
/
2
1 x
q
f
q
g
1
_ _ _ _
1 x
l
f
l
g
1
_ _ _ _
0:25
9
where q
tp
is the mixture density of the two-phase uid, q
f
is the
density of uid (kg/m
3
), q
g
is the density of vapor (kg/m
3
), l
f
is
the dynamic viscosity of uid and l
g
is the dynamic viscosity of va-
por (Pas).
2.2. Numerical method
In the present study, the convective terms of all conservation
equations are discretized by a rst-order upwind difference
scheme. The semi-implicit nite-difference scheme and the stag-
gered mesh method have been used to ensure the stability of the
computation method and improve the computational efciency.
And the characteristic of the staggered mesh method is that the
momentum control volumes are centered at the boundaries of
other control volumes. The spatial discretization is illustrated on
Fig. 2 for the owin a constant cross-sectional area duct. The scalar
variables (p, h, q) are evaluated at the centers of control volumes,
while the velocity vector u is located at the boundary between
adjoining control volumes.
The difference equations from Eqs. (6) and (7) at cell i can be
written as follows:
@q
@h
_ _
n
i
h
n1
i
h
n
i
Dt

@q
@p
_ _
n
i
p
n1
i
p
n
i
Dt

q
n
i1=2
u
n1
i1=2
q
n
i1=2
u
n1
i1=2
Dz
0
10
h
n
i
@q
@h
_ _
n
i
q
n
i
_ _
h
n1
i
h
n
i
Dt
h
n
i
@q
@p
_ _
n
i
1
_ _

p
n1
i
p
n
i
Dt

q
n
i1=2
h
n
i1=2
u
n1
i1=2
q
n
i1=2
h
n
i1=2
u
n1
i1=2
Dz

q
n
l
A
11
The difference of momentum conservation equation at junction
i 1=2 can be expressed as:
q
n
i1=2
u
n1
i1=2
q
n
i1=2
u
n
i1=2
Dt

q
n
i1
u
n
i1

2
q
n
i
u
n
i

2
Dz

p
n1
i1
p
n1
i
Dz

f
2D
e
q
n
i1=2
u
n
i1=2

2
q
n
i1=2
g 0
12
where the density of mixture q
i1=2
is equal to the density of up-
ward ow.
Eqs. (10) and (11) can be rewritten in the following form:
A
h
n1
i
h
n
i
p
n1
i
p
n
i
_ _
b f
1
u
n1
i1=2
f
2
u
n1
i1=2
13
where
A
h
n
i
@q
@h
_ _
n
i
q
n
i
_ _
=Dt h
n
i

@q
@p

n
i
1
_ _
=Dt
@q
@h
_ _
n
i
=Dt
@q
@p
_ _
n
i
=Dt
_

_
_

_
b
q
l
A
0
_ _
; f
1

q
n
i1=2
h
n
i1=2
Dz
q
n
i1=2
Dz
_
_
_
_
; f
2

q
n
i1=2
h
n
i1=2
Dz
q
n
i1=2
Dz
_
_
_
_
Eqs. (12) and (13) can be obtained in every node of the parallel
channels and two plenums. The difference equations of the parallel
Table 1
Correlations of friction pressure drop coefcient for single-phase.
Regions Correlations
Laminar Re < 1000 Darcy
Transition 1000 < Re < 2000 Linear interpolation
Turbulence Re > 2000 Blasius
Fig. 2. Difference equation discretization schematic.
X. Lu et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 63 (2014) 7582 77
channels and plenums can be solved directly to avoid the calcula-
tion of the ow distribution in different channels.
The momentum equations couple the velocities to the pressure
eld and are applied at junctions i 1=2 and i 1=2 for the control
volume i. The velocities at junctions i 1=2 and i 1=2 are only the
functions of the pressures at the n 1 time step level, which can be
derived from Eq. (12) as follows:
u
n1
i1=2
~ u
n
i1=2

Dt
q
n
i1=2
Dz
p
n1
i
p
n
i
_ _
p
n1
i1
p
n
i1
_ _ _
14
u
n1
i1=2
~ u
n
i1=2

Dt
q
n
i1=2
Dz
p
n1
i1
p
n
i1
_ _
p
n1
i
p
n
i
_ _ _
15
where
~ u
n
i1=2
u
n
i1=2

Dt
Dz
q
n
i1
u
n
i1

2
q
n
i
u
n
i

2
q
n
i1=2

Dt
q
n
i1=2
Dz
p
n
i1
p
n
i

Dt
q
n
i1=2
Dp
f

n
i1=2
q
n
i1=2
g
~ u
n
i1=2
u
n
i1=2

Dt
Dz
q
n
i
u
n
i

2
q
n
i1
u
n
i1

2
q
n
i1=2

Dt
q
n
i1=2
Dz
p
n
i
p
n
i1

Dt
q
n
i1=2
Dp
f

n
i1=2
q
n
i1=2
g
Supposing the inverse matrix of A is written as:
A
1
B
B
11
B
12
B
21
B
22
_ _
16
Eq. (13) is premultiplied by the inverse matrix of A, as shown
below:
h
n1
i
h
n
i
p
n1
i
p
n
i
_ _
A
1
b A
1
f
1
u
n1
i1=2
A
1
f
2
u
n1
i1=2
17
Substituting Eqs. (14) and (15) in to Eq. (13), a pressure eld
equation can be obtained as follows:
C
i
1
dp
i1
C
i
2
dp
i
C
i
3
dp
i1
C
i
4
18
where dp
i
p
n1
i
p
n
i
, C
i
1
, C
i
2
, C
i
3
and C
i
4
calculated with variables at
the n time step are known in this equation.
The channel is divided into N nodes. As an equation like Eq. (18)
can be obtained in every node, there are N equations in every chan-
nel constructing a tridiagonal matrix calculated by chasing method
to get the value of pressure in every node at n 1 time step. Then
other variables can be acquired from Eqs. (4) and (10).
3. Validation
3.1. Qualication of nodalization
It is noted that a qualied model may predict unrealistic results
when the nodalization is not properly qualied. Hence, before
applying the present model to study the two-phase ow instability
of parallel channels, the number of nodes in each heated channel
needs to be evaluated by a comparison of MSBs obtained by this
model. The MSBs with different node numbers are shown in
Fig. 3. It is clear that the MSB is shifted to an asymptotically stable
line on the left with the increase of node number. Thus we can
regard this stable line as the correct solution. However, it will take
more computing time when the number of the node is too large.
Therefore, a node number of 40 is chosen as a compromise be-
tween accuracy and efciency.
3.2. Verication of the model
A comparison of the calculation data obtained from the model
evaluation with the experimental data (Lu et al., 2011) is shown
in Fig. 4. The system pressures are 6 and 10 MPa, respectively.
The mass velocity is 200800 kg/(m
2
s). The length of heated sec-
tions is 1.0 m and the cross section of channel is 25 mm 2 mm.
The errors between the calculation data and the experiment data
are within 15%, which shows that the calculated results agree
well with the experiment data and the accuracy of the present
model is veried. Furthermore, Fig. 4 illustrates that the present
model is better for high pressure system since the model is a
homogenous ow model. Previous studies (such as Guo et al.,
2008a; Xia et al., 2012) and the results in the present work indicate
that the homogeneous ow model can accurately predict the MSB
with reasonable agreement with experiment data.
4. Results and discussion
In this research, the detailed information of the parallel chan-
nels system can be seen from Table 2. A plenty of calculations have
been carried out in this parallel channels system. Three kinds of ax-
ial heat ux proles including cosine heat ux, bottom-peaked
Fig. 3. Comparison of MSBs under different node numbers (7 MPa).
Fig. 4. Comparison of experiment data and calculation data.
78 X. Lu et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 63 (2014) 7582
heat ux and top-peaked heat ux (similar to Leung (2008)) were
used to analyze the effect of non-uniform heating on the system
stability. In addition, uniform heat ux was also studied as the ref-
erence case as shown in Fig. 5. A two-dimensional plane consisting
of phase change number N
pch
and subcooling number N
sub
was
used to represent the stability map of the system (Ishii and Zuber,
1970). The phase change number takes into account the power to
ow ratio and heat of vaporization, and hence indicates the phase
change due to heat addition. The subcooling number indicates the
degree of subcooling at the inlet of heater. The two nondimen-
sional numbers are dened as below:
N
pch

Q
W

v
fg
h
fg
v
f
19
N
sub

Dh
in
h
fg

v
fg
v
f
20
where Q is heating power (W), W is mass ow rate (kg/s), v
fg
is dif-
ference in specic volume of saturated liquid and vapor (m
3
/kg), v
f
is specic volume of saturated liquid (m
3
/kg), h
fg
is latent heat of
evaporation (kJ/kg), Dh
in
is the subcooling (kJ/kg).
4.1. The effect of axial non-uniform heating
As shown in Fig. 5, four different axial heat ux proles were
used to analyze the stability of the parallel channels system, under
which the MSBs of the system are presented in Fig. 6. It is obvious
that the effect of the four axial heat uxes on the system stability is
particularly different. A detailed description and explanation will
be given in the following part.
In Fig. 6, two crossing points (point D and E) can be found be-
tween the MSB line for uniform heat ux and that for bottom-
peaked heat ux or cosine heat ux. We dene that the inlet
subcooling region above point D or point E is high inlet subcooling
region, and the region below the two points is low inlet subcooling
region. For bottom-peaked heat ux, the MSB line is on the left side
of that for uniform heat ux in high inlet subcooling region which
suggests that bottom-peaked heat ux can destabilize the stability
Table 2
Detailed parameters of parallel channels.
Parameter Value
Heating length (m) 1.0
Diameter of channel (m) 0.012
System pressure (MPa) 715
Total mass ow rate (kg/s) 0.2
Fig. 5. Different heat ux proles.
Fig. 6. The MSBs of system under different heat uxes (7 MPa).
Fig. 7. The single-phase pressure drop ratios at different inlet temperature (7 MPa).
Fig. 8. The MSBs of system.
X. Lu et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 63 (2014) 7582 79
of the parallel channels system in this region. However, in lowinlet
subcooling region, bottom-peaked heat ux has a stabilizing effect
on the system and its MSB is shifted to the right side of the MSB for
uniform heat ux. In addition, the turning point of the MSB for bot-
tom-peaked heat ux is higher than that for uniform heat ux.
For cosine heat ux, a similar conclusion can be obtained as fol-
lows: the system under cosine heat ux will be destabilized in high
inlet subcooling region and strengthened in low inlet subcooling
region. Whats more, the MSB line for cosine heat ux is on the
right side of that for bottom-peaked heat ux, which suggests that
the system under cosine heat ux is more stable than that under
bottom-peaked heat ux.
For top-peaked heat ux, the MSB line is shifted to the right side
of that for uniform heat ux. Thus the stability of the system under
top-peaked heat ux is enhanced in the whole region. Therefore,
the system under top-peaked heat ux is the most stable system.
In order to explain this phenomenon, the boiling boundary and
the corresponding pressure drop distribution were studied in this
paper. The boiling boundary position is related to the inlet subco-
oling and the axial heat ux prole. In high inlet subcooling region,
the boiling boundary takes place in the top half of the channel.
However, in lowinlet subcooling region, the boiling boundary is lo-
cated in the bottom half of the channel. In addition, the boiling
boundary positions for the four axial heat uxes are also different,
resulting in different effects on the system stability. For example,
in low inlet subcooling region, the boiling boundary for uniform
heat ux occurs relatively earlier than cosine heat ux in the bot-
tom half of the channel, causing larger two-phase friction length,
which means that a uniform heat ux is more destabilizing than
the cosine heat ux (Dutta and Doshi, 2008). In this study, the dif-
ference of the boiling boundary positions for different heat uxes is
described by a single-phase pressure drop ratio which was dened
as the ratio of single-phase pressure drop to two-phase pressure
drop. Lower single-phase pressure drop ratio means larger
two-phase zone length. It is also well known that the single-phase
pressure drop plays a signicant role on the system stability.
Therefore, the single-phase pressure drop ratio was used to com-
pare the stability of the systems under bottom-peaked, cosine,
top-peaked and uniform heat uxes. When the heating power is
equal to that of point A, B and C on the MSB line for uniform heat
ux, the single-phase pressure drop ratios at the points on the line
1, 2 and 3 in Fig. 6 are carried out as shown in Fig. 7. It can be seen
that the system stability is more stable when the single-phase
pressure drop ratio is larger. Hence, it can be concluded that the
single-phase pressure drop can stabilize the system.
4.2. Inuences of various factors on system instability under cosine
heat ux
In the reactor thermalhydraulic and safety analysis, cosine
heat ux is always selected as the heating power distribution on
heated channels. Therefore, the system stability under cosine heat
ux has been drawn more attention in this paper. The inuences of
various factors (such as system pressure, heating power, inlet
subcooling number, inlet resistance coefcient) on system instabil-
ity under cosine heat ux have been studied.
4.2.1. The inuence of system pressure
In order to study the inuence of system pressure on the system
stability under cosine heat ux, the MSBs of different system
Fig. 9. The instability space (uniform heat ux).
Fig. 10. The instability space (cosine heat ux).
Fig. 11. The MSB of system under cosine heat ux (11 MPa).
80 X. Lu et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 63 (2014) 7582
pressures (i.e. 7 MPa, 11 MPa and 15 MPa) have been obtained as
shown in Fig. 8. The inuence of cosine heat ux on the system
stability under 11 MPa and 15 MPa are the same as that under
7 MPa mentioned above. However, the inuence of system pres-
sure cant be described clearly in the two-dimensional graph.
Guo et al. (2008a) proposed a concept of instability space (or insta-
bility reef) to solve this problem. In this study, the three-dimen-
sional space was used to evaluate the system instability with
cosine and uniform heat uxes and under different system pres-
sures. The three-dimensional space consists of phase change num-
ber (N
pch
), inlet subcooling number (N
sub
) and nondimensional
pressure (p p=10p
atmosphere
). The boundaries under different sys-
tem pressures from 7 MPa to 15 MPa with different heat ux pro-
les have been calculated. Three-dimensional instability spaces
under uniform heat ux and cosine heat ux are drawn in Fig. 9
and Fig. 10.
In Figs. 9 and 10, the instability space decreases with the in-
crease of system pressure, which demonstrates that the stability
of parallel channels under cosine heat ux increases with the in-
crease of the system pressure as well as that under uniform heat
ux. The shape of the instability space is just like a reef in the
whole two-phase zone. Hence, the instability space can be called
instability reef.
4.2.2. The inuence of heating power
The inuence of heating power on the system instability under
cosine heat ux was analyzed. The MSB for cosine heat ux is pre-
sented in Fig. 11, which illustrates that when the inlet subcooling
number is constant, the system goes across the MSB from the sta-
ble region to the unstable region as the heating power increases. It
is obvious that the system will be less stable with higher heating
power. When the system changes from stable state to the unstable
condition, the process is generally in the following order: damped
oscillation (Fig. 12(A)), periodic oscillation (Fig. 12(B)) and diver-
gent oscillation (Fig. 12(C)), as presented in Fig. 12.
4.2.3. The inuence of inlet subcooling number
As shown in Fig. 11, inlet subcooling number has two kinds of
opposite effects on the system stability when the heating power
Fig. 12. Inlet mass ow rate curve (p = 11 MPa, Tin = 180 C). (A) Q = 186.00 kW. (B) Q = 187.64 kW. (C) Q = 189.00 kW.
Fig. 13. Effect of inlet resistance coefcient on the system stability (cosine heat
ux).
X. Lu et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 63 (2014) 7582 81
is constant. The system moves from stable state to unstable state
with the increase of inlet subcooling number in low inlet subcool-
ing region while the system changes from unstable state to stable
condition when inlet subcooling number increases in high inlet
subcooling region.
4.2.4. The inuence of inlet resistance coefcient
For uniformheat ux, much research has been carried out about
the inuence of inlet resistance coefcient on two-phase ow
instability. However, there has been few research on this subject
under cosine heat ux. In this study, the two-phase ow instability
with different inlet resistance coefcients for cosine heat ux has
been studied as shown in Fig. 13. The lines of MSB are gradually
shifted to the right side with the increase of inlet resistance coef-
cient, which indicates that the system stability can be strength-
ened by inlet resistance coefcient. Inlet resistance coefcient
promotes the single-phase pressure drop which can enhance the
system stability. In addition, the turning point of the MSB is mov-
ing to higher inlet subcooling number with the increase of inlet
resistance coefcient.
5. Conclusions
In this paper, the two-phase ow instability in parallel channels
under axial non-uniform heating has been investigated. The sys-
tem stabilities under uniform, bottom-peaked, cosine and top-
peaked heat uxes were compared with each other. Some detailed
results under cosine heat ux have been obtained. Main conclu-
sions obtained are summarized as follows:
(1) Compared with uniform heat ux, cosine heat ux and bot-
tom-peaked heat ux have two special effects on the system
stability. In high inlet subcooling region, the system stability
is destabilized by the two heat uxes. However, the system
stability is stabilized in low inlet subcooling region. Top-
peaked heat ux can strengthen the stability of parallel
channels system in the whole region.
(2) The system stability under top-peaked heat ux is more sta-
ble than that under cosine and bottom-peaked heat uxes,
and the system under bottom-peaked heat ux is the most
unstable system for the three different axial non-uniform
heating.
(3) Under cosine heat ux, the increase of system pressure and
inlet resistance coefcient can stabilize the system. The
system stability will be destabilized with the increase of
heating power. The inuence of inlet subcooling number
on the system stability is not single-valued under cosine
heat ux. The system stability will be stabilized with the
increase of inlet subcooling in high inlet subcooling region,
while the opposite effect can be found in low inlet subcool-
ing region.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Science and Technology on
Reactor System Design Technology Laboratory of Nuclear Power
Institute of China (KZZJJ-A-201101) and National Magnetic Con-
nement Fusion Science Program (2010GB111007) for nancial
support of the present work.
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