Use of the TREPAM hot wire quenching test results for modelling heat transfer between fuel and coolant in FCI codes Original Research Article

Steam explosions are the result of the constrained thermal expansion of heated coolant by the hot fuel fragments resulting of a fine fragmentation process. Results of the hot wire quenching experiment TREPAM are used to investigate the fragments cooling rate which are seen to be smaller than the generally assumed values used in steam explosion codes. As the amount of heat to produce hot coolant (vapor in subcritical conditions or pseudo-vapor in supercritical conditions) cannot be easily obtained experimentally, a simple model using experimental results is presented to provide such an information.