Thermal Hydraulic Study for Heavy Liquid Metal Flows using COMSOL Multiphysics
K. T. Sandeep[1], S. Sahu[1], V. C. Chaudhari[1], R. P. Bhattacharyay[1], E. R. Kumar[1][1]Institute for Plasma Research, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India
Liquid metals are the extensively used as coolants in nuclear reactors.However, the heat transfer mechanism differs significantly in low Prandtl number heavy liquid metals (HLM’s) than those observed in common fluids. It is crucial to have the accurate heat transfer correlation for the liquid metal to estimate the heat removal efficiency. The present paper describes the use of COMSOL tool for analysing the heat removal phenomena for a circular pipe with molten Lead Bismuth as the process fluid.The Nusselt number have been obtained under a fully developed turbulent flow approximation and is compared with various empirical and experimentally validated HTCs. After successful comparison, the same procedure can be applied to estimate the HTC for similar liquid metals for fusion applications.
