Flow and heat transfer evaluation of lead-bismuth eutectic coolant for nuclear power application

The understanding of flow and heat transfer characteristics of liquid lead–bismuth eutectic (LBE) is essential for nuclear applications. In this paper, a corresponding experimental facility was established and a set of experiments of heat transfer of lead–bismuth eutectic flow in a circular tube was carried out, and a new heat transfer correlation was obtained through the experimental data to study the flow and heat transfer characteristics and evaluate a suitable computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model for LBE flow. The correlation fits well to the experimental data and the deviation of the correlation is smaller than 15%. At the same time, a CFD program was employed to evaluated the applicability of various turbulent models (standard k-∊, standard k-ω, SST k-ω) and turbulent Prandtl number models for LBE flows in the circular tube. Among the turbulence models, SST k-ω model shows the best agreements, the relative deviation of the simulation result from the experimental data is −3.0%∼34.7%. Among the turbulent Prandtl number models, Cheng-Tak model shows the best agreement, the relative deviation is 0.18%∼24.7%. This work provides valuable experimental data and CFD simulation method for liquid metal flow and heat transfer analysis.