Experimental study on fluid mixing phenomena in T-pipe junction with upstream elbow Original Research Article

Temperature fluctuation in fluid causes high cycle thermal fatigue in structure materials according to temperature distributions and time variations. A mixing tee is one of typical geometries where temperature fluctuation occurs. In the nuclear reactors and general plants, an elbow is often used near the mixing tee and it brings biased velocity distribution and also the secondary flow. In this study, influences of upstream elbow in the main pipe were studied in a water experiment of mixing tee with the elbow. Temperature distribution in the mixing tee was measured by a movable thermocouple tree and velocity field was measured by a high speed PIV. The temperature fluctuation at the mixing tee with the upstream elbow had the large component at low frequency in comparison with the straight case. The effect of the upstream elbow is significant to evaluate the high cycle thermal fatigue in the mixing tee because of larger importance of low frequency fluctuation on the point of fluid temperature-stress conversion.