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Studies on the self-leveling behavior of debris beds are crucial for the assessment of core-disruptive accident occurred in sodium-cooled fast reactors(SFRs). Though until now some overall characteristics of the self-leveling behavior have been preliminarily revealed by previous investigators, insufficient experimental evidence has been given in support of their claims. In addition, limitations of previously developed models for self-leveling onset have urged their improvement, especially on transient self-leveling behavior. Focusing on these aspects, the present work aims to further clarify fundamental mechanisms involved in the self-leveling behavior by investigating the flow characteristics inside debris beds and to propose useful empirical models for the prediction of self-leveling development. This work should contribute to the improvement in reliability of accident analysis of SFRs, and should be especially useful to researchers in the field of severe accident analyses.
About the author
Songbai CHENG, PhD: Nuclear Engineering at Kyushu University. Postdoctoral fellow at Kyushu University, Japan.
