Yang Xingtuan

Porous Structure Analysis of the Packed Beds in a High-Temperature Reactor Pebble Bed Modules Heat Transfer Test Facility

We analyse the porous structure of the packed beds in the heat transfer test facility built for high temperature gas cooled reactors from several aspects, such as oscillatory porosity, average porosity, thickness effect, coordination number and contact angle. An understanding and comparison of the porous structure of the facility bed and the real reactor core are developed to make recommendations for the design and analysis of the heat transfer test facility. The results show that there is very little difference between the porous characteristics of the two packed beds of spheres.

Absolute Angular Displacement Determination Based on Laser-Frequency Splitting Technology

We introduce an angle measurement system based on laser-frequency splitting technology, which is capable of absolute angular displacement determination. The core part is a dual-frequency microchip Nd:YAG laser which has two quarter-wave plates in the laser resonator and outputs two orthogonally linearly polarized lights with variable intermode frequency. A rotation of one of the wave plates shifts the frequency difference between modes. This angular displacement can thus be examined by detecting the shift of the frequency difference. The principle of the dual-frequency laser is demonstrated. A setup developed to accomplish angular displacement determinations and the experimental results of using this setup are then presented.

Effect of pebble size and bed dimension on the distribution of voidages in pebble bed reactor

The HTR-10 built at Tsinghua University is an advanced pebble bed reactor because of its inherent safety and economic efficiency. It is fundamental to explore the voidage of the pebble bed. The existing experimental bed is limited in depth and contains mono-size pebbles. The effects of pebble size and bed dimension of voidage distribution are still not well known. In this work, the discrete element method is used to simulate the static packing of pebbles of three sizes in 2D and 3D pebble beds under the same load. The effects of bed dimension and pebble size on voidage distribution are analyzed. The results are useful for better understanding of the voidage distribution of pebble bed reactor and the effects of bed dimension and particle size as well as the wall effects.