Turbulent Friction Factor for a Rod Bundle in Consideration of a Subchannel Geometry

A generalized turbulent friction factor for a rod bundle was developed based on “Law of the Wall” for a tube. It was included two parameters which are one parameter of hydraulic diameter and flow area of a subchannel and rod bundle and another parameter (called geometry parameter hereinafter) of subchannel configuration and pitch-to-diameter ratio (P/D) for a single subchannel. The turbulent geometry parameter for a single subchannel has been used as a constant on the previous works but it was found to be dependent on subchannel shapes and P/D from the present work. Hence, it was modeled as a function of the subchannel shapes and P/D from 1.0 to 1.5. The turbulent geometry parameters for single subchannels were validated by the theoretical derivation of a triangular and square subchannel. Those are compared and agreed well with the previous measurement data for 4 kinds of subchannel types such as a triangular, a square, a wall and a corner subchannel. The present model of turbulent friction factor for a rod bundle included the turbulent geometry parameter has been compared with the various experimental results for circular tubes and hexagonal tubes with various rod numbers. The predicted turbulent friction factors for those rod bundles were agreed excellently with experimental results.Copyright © 2002 by ASME