Abstract
In liquid metal (LM) magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flows in the access ducts of a breeding blanket of a fusion power reactor, the spatially varying fringing magnetic field can be responsible for high MHD pressure drop, which is one of the blanket feasibility issues. In this study, the velocity field and the pressure drop of the LM MHD flow in a square non-conducting duct have been characterized via numerical computations with COMSOL Multiphysics for the case of a non-uniform magnetic field that decreases in the flow direction. In the computations, four configurations of the fringing magnetic field varying in magnetic field gradient and a wide range of Hartmann (1000<Ha<10,000) and Reynolds (1000<Re<10,000) numbers have been employed. A total of 80 cases were computed providing a database for construction of a pressure drop correlation. The obtained correlation relates the pressure drop coefficient k to Ha, Re and the magnetic field gradient with a high accuracy with the coefficient of determination R-squared of 0.9967. Detailed analysis has been performed on the effect of the flow parameters and the magnetic field gradient on the recirculation flow bubble, which was found to form in the flow in most of the computed cases due to strong 3D MHD effects caused by the magnetic field gradient. Strong inertia effects have been found at higher Re and lower Ha numbers by comparing computed results between full and inertialess flow models.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Article number | 114262 |
Journal | Fusion Engineering and Design |
Volume | 201 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 2024 |
Funding
The authors acknowledge financial support from the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE): Yuchen Jiang under contract DE-SC0020979 with UCLA, and Sergey Smolentsev under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle, LLC. The U.S. government retains and the publisher, by accepting this paper for publication, acknowledges that the U.S. government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this paper, or allow others to do so, for U.S. government purposes. The DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan). The authors acknowledge financial support from the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE): Yuchen Jiang under contract DE-SC0020979 with UCLA, and Sergey Smolentsev under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle, LLC. The U.S. government retains and the publisher, by accepting this paper for publication, acknowledges that the U.S. government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this paper, or allow others to do so, for U.S. government purposes. The DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ).
Keywords
- 3D MHD effects
- Fringing magnetic field
- Liquid metal blanket
- MHD flow
- Pressure drop