Experimental study on spray pattern of pressure-swirl nozzle in reactor containment

Spraying system plays an important role in the safety of PWR. To ensure homogeneous spraying of the containment, the layout of nozzles on the spray header was taken into consideration in design. In this paper, an experimental study was conducted to obtain spray characteristics data, including spray cone angle and 2-D spray flux distribution for the purpose of achieving optimal design of the spraying system. According to the specialty of the spray field involved, a testing loop with four pressure-swirl nozzles was established for the study. Spray cone angles were obtained by photograph method. The volume flux distribution was measured by collecting the spray droplet along the cross-section diameters. Based on the experimental data, typical spray flux distributions were obtained. The flux distribution results were used to build 3-D coverage models. Then these models were used to calculate the overall spray coverage in the containment. The present work introduces the experimental study of spray behavior of a typical pressure-swirl nozzle in containment and the method to evaluate spray coverage through building 3-D spray flux distribution models. The work is expected to be helpful for the optimization design of spraying systems.