STREAMWISE FLUIDELASTIC INSTABILITY OF TUBE ARRAYS IN TWO-PHASE CROSS FLOW

In-plane instability of tube arrays has not been a major concern to steam generator designers until recently following observations of streamwise tube failure in a nuclear power plant in U.S.A. However, modeling of fluidelastic instability in two-phase flows still remains a challenge. In the present work, detailed steady fluid force measurements for a kernel of an array of tubes in a rotated triangular tube array of P/D=1.5 subjected to air-water two-phase flows for a series of void fractions and a Reynolds number (based on the pitch velocity), Re = 7.2 x 10(4) has been conducted. The measured steady fluid force coefficients and their derivatives, with respect to streamwise static displacements of the central tube, are employed in the quasi steady model [1, 2], originally developed for single phase flows, to analyze in-plane fluidelastic instability of multiple flexible arrays in two-phase flows. The results are consistent with dynamic stability tests [3].