Nuclear Engineering and Technology (Jun 2023)
Air horizontal jets into quiescent water
Abstract
Gas submerged jet is an outstanding thermohydraulic phenomenon in pool scrubbing of fission products during a severe nuclear accident. Experiments were performed on the hydraulic characteristics in the ranges of air mass flux 0.1–1400 kg/m2s and nozzle diameter 10–80 mm. The results showed that the dependence of inlet pressure on the mass flux follows a power law in subsonic jets and a linear law in sonic jets. The effect of nozzle submerged depth was negligible. The isolated bubbling regime, continuous bubbling regime, transition regime, and jetting regime were observed in turn, as the mass flux increased. In the bubbling regime and jetting regime, the air volume fraction distribution was approximately symmetric in space. Themelis model could capture the jet trajectory well. In the transition regime, the air volume fraction distribution loses symmetry due to the bifurcated secondary plume. The Li correlation and Themelis model showed sufficient accuracy for the prediction of jet penetration length.