Experimental Investigation on Gas Mixing and Stratification in Containment Influenced by External Cooling

Abstract

The distribution of hydrogen inside the containment is a key issue in assessing the evolution of the postulated accident. For safety analysis and codes validation purposes, a large scale comprehensive test facility has been built to investigate the containment thermal-hydraulic characteristics under accident conditions. In this paper, a test was performed to experimentally investigate the distribution of the hydrogen inside the containment and the influence of the external cooling on gas mixing and stratification. The paper presents the experimental results of the integral test performed in this facility. During the experiments, helium was used to simulate hydrogen. Helium and steam are released together and allowed to take additional time to form a relatively stable stratification, then followed by external cooling. The initial pressure of the experiments is around 0.1MPa(a) and the initial Froude number is around 333. The results showed that a helium-enriched stratification emerged in the upper containment due to the density difference after the injection. External cooling caused condensation and intense convective flow. As a result, an overall increase in helium concentration was observed with a decrease in concentration gradient.