Study of contact melting of plate bundles by molten material in severe reactor accidents

In a severe reactor accident, a crust will form on the surface of the molten material during the core melting process. The crust will have a contact melting with the internal components of the reactor. In this paper, the contact melting process of the molten material on the austenitic stainless steel plate bundles is studied. The contact melting model of parabolic molten material on the plate bundles is proposed, and the rule and main effect factors of the contact melting are analyzed. The results show that the melting velocity is proportional to the slope of the paraboloid, the heat flux and the distance between two plates D. The influence of melt gravity and the plate width on melting velocity is negligible. The thickness of the molten liquid film is proportional to the heat flux and plate width, and it is inversely proportional to the gravity. With the increase of D, the liquid film thickness decreases at first and then increases gradually. The liquid film thickness has a minimum against D. When the width of the plate is small, the width of the plate is the main factor affecting the thickness of the liquid film. The parameters are coupled with each other. In a severe reactor accident, the wider internal components of reactor, which can increase the thickness of the melting liquid film and reduce the net input heat flux from the molten material to the components, are the effective measures to delay the melting process.