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Review Article

A review of recent study on the characteristics and applications of pebble flows in nuclear engineering

Nan Gui1, Shengyao Jiang1( ), Xingtuan Yang1, Jiyuan Tu1,2
Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Nuclear Energy Technology, Key Laboratory of Advanced Reactor Engineering and Safety, Ministry of Education, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
School of Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC 3083, Australia
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Abstract

This paper reviews the recent three-year progress on the investigations of pebble bed flows in nuclear engineering. Both the application of pebble beds in the fission reactors and the fusion reactors are included. The fundamental characteristics of packing, flows, conduction, convection, radiation, and the effective thermal conductivity of pebble beds are reviewed. The important issues on the design of the pebble beds as well as that related to the reactor safety are also introduced. In addition, the advances in measurement techniques and numerical coupled methods for exploring the pebble flow characteristics are categorized and summarized too.

Keywords

pebble bedpebble flowhigh-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR)fluoride-salt-cooled high-temperature reactorlithium ceramic pebble bedeffective thermal conductivity

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Experimental and Computational Multiphase Flow
Volume 4 Issue 4,
December 2022
Pages 339-349
DOI: 10.1007/s42757-022-0140-z
Cite this article:
Gui N, Jiang S, Yang X, et al. A review of recent study on the characteristics and applications of pebble flows in nuclear engineering. Experimental and Computational Multiphase Flow, 2022, 4(4): 339-349. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42757-022-0140-z

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Received: 17 June 2022
Accepted: 18 June 2022
Published: 02 September 2022
© Tsinghua University Press 2022
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