Experimental and Numerical Study on Flow-Induced Vibration of PWR Steam Generator U-Tubes

The flow-induced vibration (FIV) of steam generators (SGs) in pressurized water reactors (PWRs) is a significant problem in the design process. This problem contains issues such as two-phase flow, nonlinear dynamics and fretting wear. In this paper, an experimental setup was established to study the FIV of a newly designed U-tube SG. Numerical simulations, including computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and vibration studies were performed to reveal the detailed mechanisms of FIV. To study the U-bend region of the tube bundles, the experiments were carried out under 23 experimental conditions containing void fractions of 70%, 80%, 90 and 95%. The flow fields of the tested model in each condition were calculated to reveal the causes of the vibration phenomenon, and the vibration results were calculated through structure dynamics. The experimental results showed that the vibration amplitudes of the U-tube increased with increasing inlet velocity, flow rate and bending radius. It decreased with increasing void fraction under the same inlet velocity, while it increased with increasing void fraction under the same flow rate. Along with the out-of-plane vibration, the in-plane vibration also featured high amplitude vibration of the U-tubes due to lack of support by the anti-vibration bars (AVBs). The simulation results show the same variation trends of the vibration responses as the above experiments. The prototype SG can be fluid-elastic stable in given working conditions, and the main vibration mechanism of this model is turbulence buffeting. The experiment and simulation methods and data can be used in the design process of new SGs similar to this prototype.