Direct Numerical Simulation of Single Bubble Growth in Superheated Sodium

by Mr Mingzheng Gong

Thursday 11 Mar 2021, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

Join Zoom meeting (https://psich.zoom.us/j/7488349803?pwd=QVpCeWFxcG9DaDRaR2k4VEhKcU1XUT09 )

The boil phenomenon of superheated liquid sodium has been studied extensively since the last century for the development of Sodium Cooled Fast Reactor (SFR). However, direct numerical simulation using CFD codes is seldom applied. In this work, the investigation on a single bubble growth in superheated sodium is conducted using a Volume-Of-Fluid (VOF) method with piecewise linear interface construction (PLIC) implemented in the home-made CFD code PSI-BOIL. Previous researches show the superheat degree of sodium boiling is generally much higher than that of water. A novel two-step VOF advection scheme is employed for dealing with the discontinuity in the velocity field across the sharp interface in presence of phase change. This work is divided into two parts: 1.  one-dimensional sucking interface problem in  superheating. 2. two-dimensional axisymmetric bubble growth in  superheating. The results are overall encouraging but more studies are still needed to be done.