Abstract:
The helical-coiled once-through steam generator (H-OTSG) is widely used in small modular reactors due to its compactness and higher heat transfer efficiency. In this study, an experimental and numerical simulation study of the thermalhydraulics characteristics of HOTSG under different thermal power conditions was carried out, and the experimental results were used to verify the onedimensional system code SGTH1D. The configuration consists of 85 helically coiled tubes divided into ten layers according to the coil diameter. Both steadystate experiments and flow instability experiments were conducted under thermal power condition ranging from 0.6 MW to 2.3 MW. Firstly, the steadystate experimental results show the difference between the shellside inlet temperature and the tubeside outlet temperature increases with thermal power, which is due to the decreasing of the heat transfer capacity of the HOTSG. Sensitivity analysis of the system parameters shows that the shellside pressure has little effect on the average heat transfer coefficient. And the average heat transfer coefficient also is insensitive to tubeside pressure and shellside inlet temperature under low thermal power conditions. However, under low thermal power conditions, the average heat transfer coefficient increases with the decrease of the tubeside pressure and the increases of the shellside inlet temperature. Secondly, the flow instability experimental results show that the increase of the thermal power can stabilize the HOTSG and decrease the inlet throttling of the flow instability thresholds because the length of the subcooled singlephase region increases with the thermal power. The sensitivity analysis of the system parameters shows that the increase of the tubeside pressure and the decrease of the shellside inlet temperature are beneficial to the stability of the system. The influence of the shellside parameters on the flow instability threshold is weaker than that of the tubeside parameters. Finally, a numerical study on the thermal-hydraulics characteristics of the configuration was carried out in the present study. By comparing the experimental data with the numerical simulation results of the SGTH1D code, the accuracy of the SGTH1D code in predicting the steadystate heat transfer characteristics and flow instability of configuration was verified. The SGTH1D code can accurately predict the heat transfer rate of the HOTSG under various thermal power conditions, and the prediction errors of shellside and tubeside outlet temperatures are within ±1 ℃. The numerical results of flow instability characteristics of the SGTH1D code are conservative at low thermal power condition, and the error of numerical results is within ±20% when the thermal power is larger than 1.2 MW.