Study of heat transfer enhancement/suppression for molten salt flows in a large diameter circular pipe: Part I: Benchmarking

Flow field and heat transfer measurement of turbulent pipe flow are carried out as a part of benchmark experiment for the flow and heat transfer measurement of electrically conducting fluid under magnetic field. The objective of this study is to clarify the effect of MHD force on the flow of molten salt simulant, potassium hydroxide-water solution in particular. At this first stage, water is used as working fluid to obtain reference data. The fully developed turbulent pipe flow at R e = 5300 is measured by using PIV technique and turbulent structure and turbulent statistics as well as averaged flow field are obtained. For heat transfer measurement, higher Reynolds number is chosen so as to reduce the effect of the buoyancy. For tests with water without the presence of the magnetic field, both heat transfer and flow field measurement results have good agreement with existing data and provide reference data of the apparatus.