Melt droplet fragmentation behavior during fuel-coolant interaction

During a severe accident of nuclear reactor, the fuel-coolant interaction occurs at the relocation stage of corium melt. Such a mode of contact can result in vigorous thermal interactions, intense steam generation and, potentially, steam explosions. The thermal processes, in their turn, largely depend on hydrodynamic behavior. When melt is pouring into coolant pool, the melt jet fragments into large droplets or blobs, named the primary breakup. The droplets or blobs will experience secondary breakup as a result of shock wave at steam explosion. Either the primary or secondary breakup is governed by interface hydrodynamic instabilities. The droplet size distribution, which affects fuel-coolant areas, is important for evaluating heat transfer and debris coolability. In this study, we modelled melt drops deformation and fragmentation using a meshless Lagrangian MPS method. Fragments amount and size distribution were compared under different Weber numbers, and fragments drag coefficient were also analyzed. The results indicate that the melt drops breakup process could be divided into two phases: initial deformation and fragmentation phase governed by flow inertial force and the subsequent fragments coalescence phase under the impact of fluid surface tension. Fragments amount increased in fragmentation phase but decreased in coalescence phase. A large amount of fragments has a normalized diameter of 0.01 - 0.03, but a small amount of large size fragments (d/d0 > 0.04) also appeared as the crescent-shaped melt broke up and small fragments coalesced. The drag coefficient decreased with time during drop deformation period, and then reached a stable value. It has no significant difference among cases with different Weber numbers.