Modelling Joule Heating for CFD Validation of Supercritical Heat Transfer

As greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, governments have collaborated to reduce the emissions despite the escalating energy demand. In this climate, there are six new types of Generation IV nuclear reactors undergoing extensive research. For Supercritical Water Reactor, supercritical water is used directly as the coolant. Regrettably, the Deteriorated Heat Transfer (DHT) phenomenon was discovered for supercritical heat transfer. When DHT is present, the wall temperature peaks may exceed the safety limit of the nuclear core and pipe's material, thereby posing a grave threat to the safety of nuclear powerplants. The mechanism of DHT is generally categorized into buoyancy-induced laminarization and acceleration-induced laminarization. In this study, however, we hypothesize that in addition to the laminarization phenomenon, the DHT observed in the experiment may also be affected by the Joule heating effect.