Nuclear Engineering and Design 238 (2008) 25462553

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Nuclear Engineering and Design

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/nucengdes

Implementation of a strainer model for calculating the pressure drop across beds of compressible, brous materials
b A. Grahn a, , E. Krepper a , S. Alt b , W. Kastner
a b

Institut f ur Sicherheitsforschung, Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, PF 510119, D-01314 Dresden, Germany Institut f ur Prozessautomatisierung, Hochschule Zittau/G orlitz, PF 1455, D-02754 Zittau, Germany

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
Mineral wool insulation debris, which is generated during a loss-of-coolant-accident (LOCA), has the potential to undermine the long-term recirculation capability of the emergency core coolant system (ECCS) in a nuclear power plant. Most importantly, ECCS pumps are faced with an increasing pressure drop while insulation debris accumulates at the pump suction strainers. The presented study aims at modelling the pressure drop of ows across growing cakes of compressible, brous materials and at the implementation of the model into a general-purpose three-dimensional (3D) computational uid dynamics (CFD) code. Computed pressure drops are compared with experimentally found values. The ability of the CFD implementation to simulate 3D ows with a non-uniformly distributed particle phase is exemplied using a step-like channel geometry with a horizontally embedded strainer plate. 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 17 April 2008 Accepted 24 April 2008

1. Introduction The investigation of insulation debris generation and transport during loss-of-coolant-accident (LOCA) events as well as the short and long-term behaviour of the emergency core coolant system (ECCS) must be considered with regard to the safety of pressure and boiling water reactors under such conditions (NRC, 2003; OECD NEA, 1995, 2004). The mineral wool blankets that are used to insulate the components of nuclear reactors can be destroyed by jetting steam during LOCA. A portion of the mineral wool bre debris can then be transported into the containment sump, which collects the cooling water for use in the ECCS in the late phase of LOCA. Mineral wool bres that accumulate at the ECCS pump suction strainers lead to increased pressure drops which could reduce the pumps capability to recirculate the cooling water. Hazards associated with such an incident were emphasized by an incident at the Barseback-2 nuclear power plant in Sweden in 1992 when a steam valve inadvertently opened (ENS, 1992). The debris quickly blocked the ECCS pump strainers, resulting in a potential compromise in the defensein-depth concept for the reactor. The present paper reports on our efforts in modelling the pressure drop buildup at strainers obstructed by brous materials and the implementation of the strainer model into the commercial, general-purpose computational uid dynamics (CFD) code

ANSYS-CFX (ANSYS Inc., 2008). Special attention is drawn to the compressibility of the brous cake. The work is embedded into a research project on generic experimental investigation and CFD modelling of separate phenomena related to the transport of brous insulation material in nuclear reactor sumps, including sedimentation, re-suspension and strainer clogging. While experiments are conducted at University of Zittau, theoretical work is concentrated at Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf.

2. Theoretical model Cakes of brous material which form on the upstream side of the suction strainers have two particular features that lead to difculties in the understanding of the ow mechanisms: (1) they are of very high porosity, and (2) due to the deformability of the bres, such cakes can be easily compressed under the action of uid drag forces or an external compacting pressure. Equations describing the ow in porous media as well as their compressibility are presented in the following.

2.1. Equation of ow through brous media

Corresponding author. E-mail address: a.grahn@fzd.de (A. Grahn). 0029-5493/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.nucengdes.2008.04.010

A standard approach in the investigation of uid ow in macroscopically homogeneous porous media is to characterize the system

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tion (Carman, 1937) Nomenclature a, a0 , b As C, D d L n Ns p pk t, t U u us x empirical parameters in the pressure drop equation, Eq. (7) solid phase mass specic surface empirical parameters of compressibility function, Eq. (12) streamwise extension of strainer subdomain, Fig. 7 streamwise bre bed length streamwise strainer surface normal vector strainer mass load pressure drop mechanical compaction pressure in the bre bed time, simulation time step continuous phase supercial velocity continuous phase velocity solid phase velocity streamwise space coordinate k(As p = L
s) 2

(1 )2

U,

(3)

where As is the surface area per unit mass of the particle phase, s its material density and k, the Ko zeny constant, a to-be-determined empirical coefcient; porosity is dened as = Vv , Vtot (4)

and expresses the ratio between the void (= pore) volume Vv and the total volume Vtot of the porous bed. Eq. (3) has been extensively used in connexion with granular media; it has shown to yield bad results for brous media, though. Analytical reasoning for this is given in Kyan et al. (1970). For bre structures Davies (1952) proposed the equation p = a(As L
s) 2

(1 )1.5 [1 + a0 (1 )3 ] U ,

(5)

Greek letters bre bed porosity s solid phase volume fraction continuous phase dynamic viscosity continuous phase density solid phase material density s

which showed better agreement with measured pressure drops across brous beds at laminar ow conditions. Based on a large amount of experimental data, Ingmanson et al. (1959) found universal values of 3.5 and 57 for the empirical coefcients a and a0 . To date these constants have been widely used for laminar ow through brous porous media. However, Davis equation still neglects the contribution of inertia to the over-all pressure drop of ow in the pore space. This deciency was remedied by Ergun (1952) who suggested the relation p As = b L (1)
s (1 ) 3

in terms of Darcys Law U= k p . L

U2,

(6)

It linearly relates the supercial ow velocity U to the hydraulic pressure difference p that is applied to a layer of porous material of streamwise thickness L and permeability k; is the dynamic viscosity of the uid. However, as evidenced by numerous experiments, this relationship only holds for very low ow velocities where viscous forces predominate. Unlike pipe ow, which is characterized by a sudden passage from the viscous to the inertial regime at a critical Reynolds number, the departure from the linear U p relationship proves to be gradual for ow in porous media. Consequently, the contribution of inertia to the ow in the pore space should also be examined in the framework of the laminar ow regime before assuming that fully developed turbulence effects are present and relevant to momentum transport (Andrade et al., 1999). A more general relationship between ow velocity and pressure drop is given by the Forchheimer equation (Dullien, 1979) p = ( U + U 2 ). L (2)

for the turbulent ow regime in granular media. Nevertheless, experimental studies (Kyan et al., 1970) indicated that the functional relationship in Eq. (6) can as well be applied to turbulent ow in brous media. The empirical constant b was found to be close to 0.66. Eqs. (5) and (6) can be combined to give a relation that encompasses the whole range of ow regimes from laminar to turbulent. It reads p = L a(As
s) 2

(1)1.5 1+a0 (1)3

U +b

As

s (1 ) 3

U2

. (7)

It regards the ow resistance of a porous layer as being made up of two parts. The rst one, which results from viscous forces, depends linearly on velocity, while the second one, resulting from inertial effects, is proportional to density of the liquid phase times the square of velocity. The relative importance of both parts is weighted by empirical coefcients and . Note that Eq. (2) is not purely empirical, since it can be derived by an appropriate average of the NavierStokes equation for one-dimensional, steady incompressible laminar ow of a Newtonian uid in an incompressible porous medium (Dullien, 1979). Initial efforts, dating back to the 1930s, focussed on the determination of the coefcient of Eq. (2) for purely viscous ow within porous media. They lead to the well-known CarmanKo zeny equa-

A simple force balance shows that the mechanical pressure, which acts on the bres and which results from the uid drag, increases in streamwise direction along the cake. As bre cakes are compressible, this leads to a porosity distribution with a maximum at the upstream and a minimum at the downstream end. Fig. 1 illustrates this decrease of porosity by the shading getting darker in streamwise direction. Therefore, Eq. (7) can only be used to calculate the differential change of the pressure drop d( p)/dx from local porosity values (x). Hence, integration of Eq. (7) in streamwise direction is required to obtain the total pressure drop p over the bre cake length L. The local change in compacting pressure dpk /dx and the pressure drop d( p)/dx of the ow have the same absolute value but are opposite in sign. For dpk /dx it follows from (7) dpk d ( p) = = a(As dx dx +b As
s (1 ) 3 s) 2

(1 )1.5 1 + a0 (1 )3

U (8)

U2.

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presented in the foregoing section as it can be combined with any working compressibility function. For a given brous material the compressibility function must be determined experimentally. The measurement principle and the experimental apparatus are depicted in Fig. 2 a and b. A known quantity ms of insulation material, placed into a vertical cylinder with cross sectional area A, is subject to a uniform compacting pressure pk , resulting from an externally applied force Fk . Then, pk amounts to pk = Fk , A (9)

and porosity can be calculated from height h as =1

Fig. 1. Fibre cake at a strainer.

ms . s Ah

(10)

As indicated above, the cake porosity depends on the local compacting pressure. Hence, the complete description of the ow still requires a compressibility function that relates porosity to the compacting pressure pk . 2.2. Compressibility function The volume reduction of a porous bed subject to a compacting pressure results from deformation of the solids. Generally, the volume reduction is, in parts, irreversible, because portions of the particles that constitute the bed may disintegrate or change their mutual orientation within the solid matrix. To the authors knowledge, a complete, theoretical foundation of the irreversible compression of porous media has not yet been published. One possible method to workaround this problem is to use different expressions for the rst and the subsequent compressions of the porous bed as shown in Jonsson and Jonsson (1992), where the solid is regarded as mechanically conditioned after the rst compression, that is, having a constant compressibility independent from the compacting pressure. The present study considers the ow through a growing bed of bres which are deposited from a dilute bre suspension during LOCA. Thus, the change of material properties due to repeated compression and release plays a secondary role and shall be neglected here. It should be pointed out, however, that the latter assumption does not imply a restriction of the applicability of the ow equation

The glass cylinder of the experimental apparatus had an inner diameter of 110 mm. The quantity of rock wool placed into the cylinder varied from 19.4 to 97 g and compaction pressures ranging from 0 to 16 kPa were applied. Most compressibility functions for brous beds, relating bed porosity to mechanical compacting pressure pk , have the form (Meyer, 1962) , = 1 qpr k (11)

with empirical parameters q and r. This expression, however, suffers from the fact that is does not give adequate estimates for the limiting cases of zero and innite compaction pressures. Therefore, the four-parameter equation (pk ) = + (0 ) e
CpD
k

(12)

is suggested, which does not have this shortcoming. It has proven to reproduce measured relationships (pk ) especially well. Fig. 2 c illustrates the expected curve as well as two of the parameters, the porosities 0 and at zero and innite compacting pressures. Determination of the parameters in Eq. (12) requires a non-linear least-squares tting method, such as the MarquardtLevenberg algorithm, which is, for example, implemented in the open-source data plotting software Gnuplot (Williams et al., 2008). Fig. 3 shows compaction measurements of a mineral wool sample. It can be seen that there is no signicant effect of temperature on the compaction properties in the applied range. Therefore, the measurements were tted by a single set of parameters of

Fig. 2. (a) Compaction measurement principle; (b) compaction measurement apparatus; (c) typical compaction curve (pk ).

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Fig. 3. Measured relationship of compaction pressure pk and porosity (compaction curve) for a given sample of mineral wool.

Eq. (12) to yield the solid line of the plot. Based on an estimated material density of s = 2500 kg m3 of the mineral wool the following values were assigned: 0 = 0.9833, = 0.9147, C = 0.00712467 Pa0.5197 and D = 0.5197. 3. Application of the model equations to the 1D case Flow Eq. (8) and the compressibility function (12) constitute an initial value problem for calculating the streamwise compaction pressure and porosity proles along the bre cake. It has to be solved by integration with respect to x starting at the upstream end of the cake towards the strainer plate with initial conditions pk (0) = 0 and (0) = 0 , which correspond to zero compaction pressure and standard porosity of the mineral wool. A stopping condition for the integration needs to be formulated yet. Integration should stop, as soon as the amount of brous phase contained in the integration interval corresponds to a previously given strainer mass load Ns,given . Strainer mass load Ns is dened as mass of bres per unit area of strainer plate. The contribution dNs of an innitesimal slice dx of the cake to the total strainer mass load is calculated from local porosity as dNs =
s (1 )dx.

Fig. 4. Computed porosity (a) and compaction pressure (b) proles along a bed of mineral wool at different supercial water velocities; given strainer mass load: Ns = 10 kg m2 , strainer position at x = 0.

(13)

Thus, differential equation dNs = dx

s (1 ),

(14)

must be solved together with the differential equation of ow (8), subject to the initial condition Ns = 0 at the upstream end of the cake. Integration stops on fullling the condition Ns (x) = Ns,given , yielding the total length (streamwise thickness) L of the compressed bre cake. The pressure difference over the entire bre bed follows directly from the compacting pressure at the strainer position as p = pk (L). (15)

The system of Eqs. (8), (12) and (14) was implemented and solved numerically by means of GNU-Octave (Eaton et al., 2008). Computed compacting pressure and porosity proles along beds of mineral wool at different supercial uid velocities are displayed in Fig. 4. The mass specic surface As of the brous material was roughly estimated to be 160 m2 kg1 according to equation As = 4 , ds s (16)

based on a typical bre diameter of ds = 10 m, visually determined by microscopy, and the material density of 2500 kg m3 . Water at

room temperature was taken as the liquid phase. The left end x positions of the proles mark the total length L of the compressed bre bed, while x = 0 marks the strainer position. It can be seen, that higher ow velocities lead to a stronger non-linearity of the computed proles. As expected, the compaction pressure increases progressively in the streamwise direction due to decreasing porosity. The total pressure drop p was determined, both numerically and experimentally, as a function of the supercial velocity. A schematic view of the experimental set-up is given in Fig. 5. The vertical test section consisted of two circular perspex tubes of 220 mm inner diameter where the rst one, mounted on the upstream side of the strainer plate, had a length of 1.4 m while the second one, serving as the downstream section, had a length of 1 m. The strainer plate was made of pre-fabricated perforated steel plate of 2.5 mm thickness with wholes of 4 mm diameter and 7 mm distance. The volumetric ow rate was determined using a magneto-inductive owmeter (Krohne, IFC 090) and the pressure difference using an electric differential pressure transmitter (ABB, 2010 TD HART). Water was thermostatted by electric heating of the deionized water tank; the temperature was measured at three locations (water tank, inlet and outlet of the test section) by means of thermocouples (Type K, DIN EN 60584-2). After starting the pump, clean water was circulated through the test rig until stationary ow rate and temperature established. The rock wool suspension, stored in the holding tank, was then added to the ow at once. Again, the system was given time to adjust ow rate and temperature as well as to clear the circulating water before measuring the differential pressure. Experimental runs started at the lowest ow rate, which was stepwise increased for subsequent measurements. After the nal measurement of a run, the test section was dismounted

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A. Grahn et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 238 (2008) 25462553 Table 1 Experimental conditions Run 1 2 3 4 5 Ns (kg m2 ) 6.01 6.01 3.87 1.96 0.32 T ( C) 44.6 59.0 58.9 59.7 59.7 (kg m3 ) 990.44 983.69 983.77 983.35 983.35 (mPa s) 0.601 0.474 0.475 0.469 0.469

4. Implementation into CFD code ANSYS-CFX The implementation of the model into a general purpose code such as ANSYS-CFX requires the transition from the zero to a twodimensional representation of the strainer plate. Moreover, the model should be applicable to the simulation of transient ows. The former task is addressed by placing a subdomain of xed thickness d into the ow geometry. It represents the lter cake and the strainer plate and separates the upstream from the downstream region, as illustrated in Fig. 7. The cross-stream distribution of the strainer resistance is made up by a parallel connexion of multiple resistances, the magnitude of each depending on the local particle mass load and supercial velocity values. The resistance of the clean strainer plate is to be neglected in this study. Experiments have shown that its contribution to the overall pressure drop is small in comparison to that of the bre cake. Nevertheless, it can easily be accounted for by an additional loss coefcient. In order to make allowance for transient ows, the strainer mass load distribution at time t has to be calculated by integrating the particle phase mass ow passing through the strainer subdomain with respect to time according to
t

Fig. 5. Test rig for pressure drop measurements.

in order to remove the accumulated bre cake which was then dried and weighed for determination of the strainer mass load Ns . Results of the differential pressure measurements are shown in Fig. 6. For comparison the computed curves and measured data points have been plotted into one diagram. The curves represent different experimental conditions, i.e. strainer mass loads and uid properties, which are summarized in Table 1. It can be seen that calculated and measured pressure drops are of the same order magnitude and that the experimentally found non-linear relationship between pressure drop and ow velocity, which is characteristic for compressible brous media, could be reproduced in a qualitative manner. It must be noted that estimated values of solid density and bre surface have been used for calculations. Better quantitative agreement could be obtained using exact values which were not available to the authors.

Ns (t ) =

s 0

s us, d ,

(17)

where s represents the local particle phase volume fraction of the ow, reaching the strainer subdomain at a velocity us, perpendicular to the strainer. For this to work, the particle phase must be able to freely penetrate the strainer subdomain. The particle phase can be removed from the ow only after passing the strainer subdomain, using an appropriately formulated sink term in the particle phase continuity equation which is applied to the downstream region. According to the CFX-Manual on solver theory the continuity equation, as implemented in the code, reads t (s
s) +

(s

s us )

mass = Ss ,

(18)

mass is a user specied mass source. Initially, the downwhere Ss stream region is free of particle phase. Since this state is to be maintained the instationary term must be zero:

t (s

s)

= 0.

(19)

Fig. 6. Pressure drop across compressed bre bed vs. supercial velocity: experiments (points) and computed proles (lines).

Fig. 7. Strainer represented as CFX subdomain.

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Thus, the mass source can be written as

mass Ss

= (s

s us ).

(20)

Eq. (20) even allows for possible changes in the solid material density. It is implemented as a User-Fortran routine into the CFX solver. Since the CFX solver does not allow to calculate the divergence term on the right hand side directly it had to be expanded rst to give
mass = Ss s

(s us + us s ) + s us

s.

(21)

Solution elds are available at discrete time steps only. Therefore, the integrand in Eq. (17) has to be evaluated numerically giving the current strainer mass load Ns, cur . During the coefcient loops, distributions of the volume fraction s and the associated particle phase velocity us are still intermediate. Hence, strainer mass load Ns, cur is calculated by adding the approximate mass load increment of the current time step to the converged mass load of the previous time step: Ns, cur = Ns, prev + s
s

Fig. 8. Flow geometry with computational grid.

t max(us n, 0).

(22) For simplicity the same coefcient is used for the transversal ow direction. If the homogeneous multiphase model is used in the set-up of a particular ow problem, coefcient S has yet to be divided by the continuous phase volume fraction. In the homogeneous model, all phases share a single velocity eld and the momentum source (25) is weighted by the volume fraction of each phase. Dividing S by the continuous phase volume fraction ensures that the momentum source be applied entirely to the continuous phase. Momentum source (25) can now be set for the strainer subdomain. On solving the momentum equations in a CFX solver run, integration of Eq. (25) establishes the previously determined pressure drop between the up and downstream ends of the strainer subdomain. 5. Three-dimensional (3D) simulations with ANSYS-CFX As shown in Section 3, the strainer pressure drop model yields realistic values of p in the one-dimensional case. CFD codes allow the simulation of three-dimensional ows in arbitrarily shaped geometries. Hence, for testing the implementation of the strainer pressure drop model it would be natural to consider ows with a non-uniformly distributed particle phase, that would lead to partially or at least unevenly loaded strainers. For this purpose, a step like channel geometry with a horizontally embedded strainer was constructed. 5.1. Problem set-up The ow geometry that has been used for simulation is shown in Fig. 8. It consists of two straight channel segments with quadratic cross sections representing the up and downstream parts. Both channels are connected by a strainer domain of size 20 cm 20 cm and 1 cm thickness. The channel segments are discretized by cubic elements of 1 cm edge length, whereas the strainer is discretized into three layers of elements of size 1 cm 1 cm 1/3 cm. The ow is simulated based on the homogeneous EulerEuler model where a common ow eld is shared by the continuous and the solid particle phase. The SST turbulence model was chosen as it showed best convergence. Buoyancy was not considered. Except for the quadratic faces at both channel ends, the no-slip condition has been assigned to all channel bounds. A plug-like, constant velocity of u = 4 cm s1 was set at the inlet boundary on the left end of the

n is the streamwise surface normal vector of the strainer plate. Ns, cur is updated at every coefcient loop and overwrites Ns, prev only at the end of the current time step, when the solution elds are taken as converged. Consequently, Ns, cur and Ns, prev must be stored in two different user-dened solver variables. Now that the mass load distribution Ns,cur is at ones disposal, the compacting pressure pk acting onto the strainer can be computed from the local supercial velocity by solving Eqs. (8), (12) and (14). Supercial velocity U in Eq. (8) is obtained from liquid phase velocity u by U = (1 s )u n. (23)

The actual task of integrating the system of differential Eqs. (8) and (14) is passed on to the differential equation solver lsodar which is part of the open-source library Odepack by Hindmarsh et al. (2008). lsodar is a solver with root nding capabilities as it stops the integration when it nds the root of at least one of a set of constraint functions. In the present case a constraint function is given by g = Ns (x) Ns, cur , (24)

where Ns (x) is the particle mass load at the current position x on the integration path, cf. Fig. 1. The wanted pressure drop p is readily obtained from the compaction pressure pk at the stopping position according to Eq. (15). Finally, the ow resistance the liquid phase experiences within the strainer subdomain must be determined. It is modelled as source S mom in the momentum transport equation using the Directional Loss Model of CFX:
mom = S uS + S u2 SS S , mom ST = T uT + T u2 T .

(25) (26)

With this model, linear and quadratic loss coefcients and may be provided for the streamwise (subscript S) and transversal (subscript T) directions of ow. The computed pressure drop p already contains the viscous ( u) and inertial ( u2 ) contributions to the momentum loss, cf. Eq. (7). Therefore, only one of the coefcients or needs to be determined, while the other can be set to zero. Here, the linear coefcient has been chosen. For the streamwise direction of the liquid phase it reads S = p . d un (27)

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A. Grahn et al. / Nuclear Engineering and Design 238 (2008) 25462553

Fig. 9. Flow eld (streamlines) in the channel mid plane: (a) t = 0 s and (b) t = 40 s.

channel, cf. Fig. 8, and the Averaged Static Pressure condition at the outlet on the right end. As with the stand-alone 1D implementation (Section 3), water at room temperature was used as continuous phase and rock wool as particle phase. First, a stationary solution of the velocity and pressure elds was computed for clear water owing through the domain. This solution was then used as initial condition for the transient twophase ow simulation. Transient runs made use of the 2-step Backward-Euler time discretization scheme and high-resolution schemes were applied on the spatial derivatives of the transport equations. A two-phase simulation starts with the particle phase entering the ow domain at the inlet face. Throughout the transient run, a linear volume fraction prole of the particle phase was maintained at the inlet boundary in order to achieve a non-uniform impingement onto the strainer. The particle volume fraction s was set to zero at the top and to 0.015 at the bottom of the channel inlet. 5.2. Simulation results Flow elds at different simulation times are shown in Fig. 9. The solution at t = 0 s corresponds to the stationary solution that was found for clear water lling the computational domain. A large recirculation area forms behind the back facing step in the lower channel section and two smaller ones at the upper right corner of the upstream section as well as beneath the upper wall of the downstream section. The most noticeable difference between the ow elds at start and end of the simulation is the ow direction in the strainer subdomain. The particle laden strainer acts like a rectier which forces the ow into the vertical direction while smoothing out velocity differences, such as the high velocity at the right step edge at x = 0.7 m. This becomes clearer in Fig. 10 a which plots ow velocity proles along the strainer for different simulation times. The velocity maximum at the right end of the strainer decreases during the simulation. This rectifying effect is caused by the high pressure drop across the clogged strainer, Fig. 10 b, leading to a pressure gradient whose maximum is in the strainer normal direction. Proles of mass load Ns are shown in Fig. 11. Initially, the mass of deposited brous particles is unevenly distributed on the strainer plate due to the orientation of the latter within the ow geometry as well as the prescribed prole of the particle phase volume fraction at the channel inlet. While minimum and maximum values of

Fig. 10. Distributions of (a) ow velocity and (b) pressure drop along strainer at the channel mid plane.

Fig. 11. Fibre mass load distribution along strainer at the channel mid plane.

Fig. 12. Average strainer mass load, compaction pressure and pressure drop at strainer vs. time.

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Ns differ by about two orders of magnitude at t = 15 s, differences gradually smooth out with time. Fig. 12 shows how strainer mass load, compaction pressure and pressure drop evolve with time. All three quantities have been averaged about the cross stream area of the strainer plate. The particle phase reaches the strainer after approximately 13 s of simulation time. At the same time the brous lter cake begins to form giving rise to the pressure drop increase. As expected, it can be observed that the pressure drop resulting from the momentum source, Eq. (25), follows exactly the compaction pressure at the strainer surface. 6. Conclusion The linear relationship between supercial ow velocity and pressure drop, as suggested by Darcys law, fails in the case of compressible, brous media. In the present article a combination of a semi-empirical ow equation and a material equation is proposed that allows to calculate the pressure drop in beds composed of this class of materials. The system of model equations constitutes an initial value problem which is solved numerically for given strainer mass load and ow velocity. Solid density, mass specic surface and the static compaction properties of the brous material need to be known. Computed porosity and compaction pressure proles are strongly non-linear along the bre bed due to the compaction pressure which increases in the streamwise direction. The experimentally found non-linear relationship between ow velocity and pressure drop could be reproduced using a one-dimensional implementation of the model equations. The model can be used for implementation into system codes for nuclear reactor and containment simulation. Thus, existing system codes might be enabled for use in the risk assessment of loss-of-coolant accidents. The model has been successfully implemented as an extension to the general-purpose CFD code ANSYS-CFX. Its capability to simulate the transient pressure drop build-up at non-uniformly

loaded strainers in arbitrary three-dimensional geometries has been demonstrated using a step-like ow geometry with a horizontally embedded strainer plate. It was shown that the increasing pressure drop at the strainer has a rectifying effect on the ow and pressure elds. Acknowledgment This study was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economy and Technology under the grant Nos. 1501270 and 1501307. References
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