Validation of the model of water jet breakup in liquid metal

This paper analyses the processes involved with steam generator tube rupture in a lead-cooled reactor. Such rupture produces a jet of high-pressure water discharging into molten lead in the primary circuit. Hydrodynamic instabilities fragment this water jet into droplets surrounded by steam films. The resulting multiphase mixture “molten lead - steam - water droplets” may undergo energy interactions (steam explosions). This paper describes a model of steam-filmed water jet fragmentation in molten metal. The model relies on linear analysis of hydrodynamic stability of interfaces between phases. Experiments performed to validate this model used neutron radiography to explore the interactions between water jet and molten lead-bismuth alloy. Since the experimental data did not allow for full validation of the model, a qualitative comparison of respective computations made for the two cases observed in the experiments was carried out to demonstrate that the model does reproduce the experimental trends.