LOCO - a linearised model for analysing the onset of coolant oscillations and frequency response of boiling channels.

Abstract

Industrial plant such as heat exchangers and nuclear and conventional boilers are prone to coolant flow oscillations which may not be detected. In this report a hydrodynamic model is formulated in which the one-dimensional non-linear partial differential equations for the conservation of mass energy and momentum are perturbed with respect to time linearised and Laplace-transformed into the s-domain for frequency response analysis. A computer program has been developed to integrate numerically the resulting non-linear ordinary differential equations by finite difference methods. A sample problem demonstrates how the computer code is used to analyse the frequency response and flow stability characteristics of a heated channel.