Analysis of flow instabilities at the natural circulation loop DANTON with regard to non-linear effects

The natural circulation loop DANTON at the Dresden University of Technology was designed to investigate the thermohydraulic properties of integrated reactor concepts with a natural circulation driven primary loop. It is not possible to reach a stable two-phase flow in the loop without passing flow instabilities. At an equilibrium of heating and cooling power the flow oscillations can exist at nearly constant frequencies and amplitudes. The oscillating mass flow signal had been investigated by various methods: (a) autocorrelation function, (b) Fast Fourier transformation, (c) estimation of a temporal Liapunov-exponent and (d) reconstruction of the system attractor in a three-dimensional phase space. The selected time-series express a non-linear behaviour, however, they are not chaotic. In comparison to the usual methods the applied analysing methods yield additional information about system frequencies, sensitiveness to disturbances and properties due to non-linear and chaotic behaviour in a natural circulation loop. Received on 17 January 2000