Proceedings of the 2017 25th International Conference on Nuclear Engineering
ICONE25
CFD ANALYSIS OF THE PRIMARY SIDE IN A HELICAL-COIL ONCE-THROUGH
STEAM GENERATOR
Kai Ye Yaoli Zhang*
College of Energy, College of Energy, Xiamen
Xiamen University University
Xiamen, Fujian, China Xiamen, Fujian, China
zhangyl@xmu.edu.cn
Yinglin Yang Zhuocheng Li
College of Energy, College of Energy, Xiamen
Xiamen University University
Xiamen, Fujian, China Xiamen, Fujian, China
ABSTRACT
The helical-coil once-through steam generator (OTSG) is
usually used in the nuclear power plant when the compactness
of equipment was taken into consideration. The investigation of
flow parameters in the primary side is valuable for the
optimization of the OTSG. The purpose of this research is to
obtain a further understanding of fluid behaviors in the primary
side of the OTSG to achieve a more rational design. Using
ANSYS ICEM and ANSYS FLUENT, a three-dimensional(3D)
computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was created and
analyzed. Through a series of cases, the velocity profiles and
pressure drop through the primary side of the helical-coil OTSG
have been calculated, and the influences of different structure
designs on the coolant flow parameters have also been tested.
Ultimately some pertinent suggestions for improvements were
proposed, and insight is obtained into the importance of various
modeling considerations in such a model with a complicated
structure and large-scale grids.
INTRODUCTION
Small modular reactor is designed to target markets where
the power demand and electrical grid capabilities are
insufficient to support large nuclear power plant [1]. When it
was used to drive a ship or served as a floating nuclear power
plant(FNPP), the compactness of energy equipment would be a
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July 2-6, 2017, Shanghai, China
ICONE25-66546
Jianshu Lin Ning Li
Hualong Pressurized College of Energy,
Water Reactor Technology Xiamen University
Corporation, Xiamen, Fujian, China
Beijing, China
Junwei Hao Yifen Chen
College of Energy, Xiamen College of Energy,
University Xiamen University
Xiamen, Fujian, China Xiamen, Fujian, China
crucial problem to concern. In this circumstance, the helical-
coil OTSG will be adequate because of its compact structure
and high efficiency of heat transfer [2].
In the primary side of OTSG, the coolant with high
temperature flows across helical-coil tube bundle and heats the
feed water in the secondary side into superheated state. It needs
to be determined what the coolant distribution is in the OTSG,
because the temperature variation in the primary side has
impact on the outlet temperature of secondary side in different
layers of heat transfer tubes. Furthermore, the coolant flow
resistance in the OTSG also has to be assessed to determine the
power of the primary pump. Because the geometry of the
primary side of the OTSG is complicated, computational fluid
dynamics(CFD) method can be used to calculate the pressure
drop.
Boyd et al used CFD method to investigate the coolant
flow behaviors in the inlet plenum during a severe accident
scenario in a PWR power plant. The model was created for 1/7
scale of the steam generator with k   turbulence model [3].
Reza Ghafouri -Azar developed a CFD model to test the effect
of flow behaviors in CANDU steam generator [4].By using
k   turbulence model, he calculated the flow parameters in
lower plenum and varied the inlet tube size and locations to
explore the effect of turbulence on coolant flow. They have
made some meaningful conclusion about the flow field in the
 primary side of steam generator by using CFD method, but both flows downwards in the pipes covered by supporting cylinder.
of their studies are about U-tube steam generator(UTSG). The feed water is then converted to saturation state and finally
Other studies about helical coil OTSG focus more on the becomes superheated alone the helical-coil tubes.
phenomenon in the heat transfer pipes. Such as Choi et al. used
CFD method to simulate the laminar flows in helical-coil tubes
and investigated the phenomenon of secondary flow. [5]. And
Ebrahim Ahmadloo et al numerically studied the laminar flow in
coiled hollow dusts by varying Reynolds numbers[6]. They
draw the conclusion that there would be a region with high flow
rate and pressure at the outer side of tube when the Reynolds
number is big.
It is meaningful to use numerical calculation tools to
investigate the correlations between flow behaviors and the
structure of OTSG, as the cost of such a full scale experimental
research is impractical due to the limitation of experimental
conditions. And the method can provide with reference and
guidance for experimental research and theoretical analysis.
However, it is hard to find a complete 3-D numerical model of
the helical coil OTSG in the previous studies to predict the flow
field in the primary side.
This paper intends to build on the fundamental
understanding of fluid conditions and tries to find out the
correlations between the structure of the steam generator and
flow behavior in the primary side. Using computational fluid
dynamics method, an entire numerical model has been created
and the velocity profiles and pressure drops through the primary
side of steam generator can be attained, which is available to
achieve a more rational structure design of helical-coil OTSG.
Through a series of cases, the influence of the height of “tube-
in-tube” nozzle on flow distribution in OTSG has been tested.
Moreover, the impact of the different structure of inlet tube on
pressure drop characteristics is also being discussed. Ultimately,
insight is obtained into the importance of various modeling
considerations in a model with such a complicated structure and
large-scale grids, and some pertinent suggestions for
improvement of structure will be proposed.

METHODOLOGY
A helical-coil OTSG which has the same type of structure
of the OTSG in KLT-40s has been taken as studying object of
this article. The OTSG in KLT-40s is designed to remove the
heat of coolant and employ the once-through concept to Figure1 the structure of OTSG in KLT-40s
produce dry, superheated steam at the outlets of the steam
generator. The structure of OTSG in KLT-40s is shown in
Figure1 [7]. The high-temperature reactor coolant gets into the ANSYS ICEM was used to develop the three-dimensional
steam generator through the entrance pipe of “tube-in-tube” model of the OTSG with unstructured meshes. the geometry
nozzle at the side of main vessel. Then the coolant flows model and meshes are shown in the Figure 2 and Figure 3,
upwards in the cavity between external vessel and internal respectively.
cylinder and enters the downward cavity through 50 connecting
channels at the top of internal cylinder. After that the coolant
flows across helical-coil heat transfer tubes and transmits the
energy to the feed water in the helical-coil pipe. The coolant
reaches the lower plenum and turns around to the outlet of
“tube-in-tube” nozzle to exit the steam generator. Meanwhile,
feed water enters the OTSG at the top of the generator, and

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Figure2 geometry model of OTSG in ICEM
Figure3 meshes sectional drawing
ANYSY FLUENT was used as a tool to perform the
calculations, which is a commercial CFD software with
considerable physical models. It can study a wide range of
lamina and turbulent hydraulic problems by solving continuity
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equation, momentum equation and energy equation. The forms
of the equations are showed below:

 ▽( v )= Sm
t

(  v)    (  vv)   p  g  F
t

(  E )    (v(  E  p))    ( h j J j )  Sh
t j
Sm is the mass source converted from other phase to the
phase discussed or the user defined sources. p is the static
pressure.  g is the gravitational body force. F is external
body force which also contains other model-dependent source
terms such as porous-media and user-defined sources.
Realizable k   turbulence model was used to simulate
average fluid characteristics for flow in turbulent state by
solving two separate transport equations, and scalable wall
function was taken into account for simulation of near wall
flow.
The objective of this study is the primary side of the
helical-coil OTSG, two simplification assumptions are made in
this paper. Firstly, it takes advantage of porous media to
describe the head loss of the tube bank, as it is too complicate
to model this part in detail. Porous media could be used to
determine the pressure loss in the media as the input presetted.
The parameters of porous media were set by power law
according to the calculation result of Gilli’s formula.
Gilli [8]analytically figured out the formula of pressure
drop characteristics for the flow across banks consisting of plain
(unfinned) helical tubes in a multistart arrangement with
essentially uniform inclination angles, uniform longitudinal
pitches and hence essentially equal heat loads per tube, but with
tube pattern changing continuously around the perimeter, from
the relatively well-known heat transfer coefficients and friction
factors for the flow across banks of straight tubes with in-line
and regularly staggered tube patterns.
nG 2
Δpf =3.2732f eff Ci Cn
2
feff is the correction factor of different tube arrangements,
Ci is the correction factor of the effect of tube inclination,
C n is the correction factor of the effect of the number of tube
rows, n is the number of tubes, G is the mass flow rate.
Secondly, this research regards coolant as a liquid with
constant property, for the temperature difference in the primary
side is not obvious.
This research contains several calculation cases for
different types of geometry with different calculation inputs.
 Below is the outline of the calculation cases performed in this
paper.
Case I: Based on type of structure of the OTSG in KLT-
40s, an entire 3-D numerical model of the primary side was
created. The sensitivity of grids was tested by three set of
meshes with different meshing densities. Through the
calculation, the flow field of the primary side has been solved,
and the pressure drops of coolant in the steam generator have
been analyzed.
Case II: For design optimization of fluid distribution in the
OTSG, the correlation between location of the “tube-in-tube”
nozzle and fluid distribution was investigated. Comparison and
analysis on three different types of structure with different
locations of the “tube-in-tube” nozzle in the case II were
performed.
Case III: A structure with horizon inlet tube was modeled，
and the differences of pressure drops and flow distribution
between different structures were obtained. Some suggestions
for improvement of structure have been proposed
The second order upwind discretization schemes were used
to solve pressure, momentum and turbulent parameters.
Boundary conditions of the model were velocity-inlet no-slip-
wall and pressure-outlet. The coolant had a volumetric flow rate
of 4000m³/h, and left the steam generator with a pressure of
15.44 MPa.
Residual definitions are available for judging
convergence[9]. In the Figure5, the abscissa stands for numbers
of iterations, and the vertical axis shows the changes of
residuals for flow parameters. As is showed in the graph, the
residuals decreased to 10-3 for all equations, which could be an
evidence for the convergence of iterations.

PHASEⅠ:COMPLETE CALCULATION OF CASEⅠ

The geometry model of the OTSG was built in CATIA and
was imported into ICEM for mesh generation. ICEM contains
many useful functions to build 3-D grids, including geometry
adjustment, mesh generation, and mesh optimization. The
meshes were generated by unstructured tetrahedral, and prism
layers was created to meet the requirement of y+ in a wall-
function simulation. Figure4 shows the contour of y+ of the
mesh. Figure 5 residual curves

The Figure6 shows the converging condition of total

pressure of outlet. As shown in the Figure6, the flow parameter
at the monitoring place has become convergent in the
calculation.

Figure 6 total pressure curve of outlet

Three sets of grids with different node numbers were
Figure 4 contour of y+ established, and the grid independence was tested by them.
Figure7 shows the pressure distribution curves for a line

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 segment in upward cavity. As showed in the curves, the mesh
with 16829533 nodes has met the requirement of grids
independence, and the result of this set of mesh was selected for
post-process. The other cases mentioned in this paper have all
been validated by grids independence tests.
Figure 7 pressure distribution in reference position
Figure8 presents the velocity streamlines in the OTSG. The
maximum flow velocity is 14.26m/s at the inlet nozzle, as there
is a sudden decrease of the cross section area. Then the velocity
of flow decreases, and fluid flows upwards to the top of steam
generator to enter the downward cavity. The flows turn around
to the outlet at which the flows velocity increases again as the
cross section area becomes small.
Figure 8 velocity streamlines
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When designing a steam generator or nuclear power plant,
it is inevitable to assess the irreversible pressure drops (△Pir)
which is rest part after subtracting the gravity pressure drop
from total pressure drop. The irreversible pressure drops in the
steam generator of primary side are shown in Table 1.
Inlet Downward Outlet
Location
nozzle cavity nozzle
△Pir 21059 62792 22112
Table1 △Pir in the OTSG unit: Pa
As shown in table1, the △Pir of the downward cavity is
mostly caused by the flows cross the heat transfer tube bundles,
which is determined by the input parameters of porous media.
The △Pir in the “pipe-in-pipe” nozzle is also considerable,
because it is common for eddies or vortexes to develop at the
corners of a sudden expansion structure or a sudden contraction
structure, which is a major source for the head loss[10]. It
would be much better to provide a streamlined geometry
between smaller cross section area and larger cross section or to
enlarge the smaller cross section area.
Flow distributions at the 50 connecting channel would have
a great influence on the effect of the heat transfer in tube
bundles. In general, when doing a thermodynamic calculation of
the steam generator, a uniform flow distribution assumption has
been made. So it needs to validate how the flow distribution is
in the OTSG. Figure 10 shows the normalized flowrate of the 50
connecting channel. Figure 9 indicates how the number of 50
channels was specified. As Figure 9 shows that, the farther away
from the inlet nozzle, the lower flow rate is in the channel.
Figure 9 channels numbering
 flow flux. Meanwhile, the structure with lower “tube-in-tube”
pipe has a more uniform flow distribution.
There are two reasons available to explain this
phenomenon. On one hand, the distances of 50 channels from
the inlet have less relative differences with the lower “tube-in-
tube” pipe. On the other hand, the coolant in the structure with
higher “tube-in-tube” pipe couldn’t have a sufficient mixing of
coolant in upward cavity, which leads to a non-uniformity of
flow distribution.

PHASE Ⅲ: DIFFERENT INLET TUBE INCLINATION

From the result of case I, there are great losses of
irreversible pressure in the “tube-in-tube” nozzle. One can note
that, the OTSG has an inclined inlet tube which was designed
based on the consideration to reduce the flow induced vibration.
This phase provides a comparison analysis between a horizontal
inlet tube and an inclined one with the same flow cross section
area. The two different structures are showed in Figure12.
Figure 10 flow distribution curve

PHASE Ⅱ: DIFFERENT LOCATION OF NOZZLE

It is more rational to obtain an even flow distribution into
the downward cavity by structural design, and the location of
“tube-in-tube” pipe is a critical factor in flow distribution. This
paper investigates the correlation between structure of OTSG
and flow distribution by changing the location of “tube-in-tube”
pipe. Three types of geometries with different locations of
“tube-in-tube” pipe are modeled and studied separately, and the
flow distribution curves are shown in Figure10. The middle
location is the same geometry as case I. The nozzle in higher
location is 100 cm higher than which in case I, while the lower
location 100 cm lower.

Figure12 comparison of different inlet tube

Location
Inlet downward outlet
nozzle cavity nozzle
Tube type
Inclined tube 21059 62792 22112
Horizontal tube 27565 62766 26037
Differences 30.09% - 17.75%
Table2 △ Pir in different structure unit: Pa
Table2 shows the △Pir in the two different structures, it is
Figure11 flow distribution curves obvious that the structure with inclined inlet tube has less
△Pir. As shown in Figure13 and Figure14, the fluid in the
The curves in Figure11 indicate that the “tube-in-tube” pipe structure with horizontal inlet tube has a larger scale of eddy,
at higher position of the vessel causes a non-uniform flow which could be the overwhelming reason for the larger △Pir
distribution, and minimum flow flux is 85% of the maximum [11]. And as shown in Figure15, the inlet tube inclination does

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 not have much influence on the flow distribution. So the
structure with inclined inlet tube should be the better choice for
structural design.
Figure13 velocity vector drawing at inclined inlet tube
Figure14 velocity vector drawing at horizontal inlet tube
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Figure15 flow distribution curves for different inlet tubes
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
In order to obtain a further understanding of fluid behaviors
in the primary side of the OTSG to achieve a more rational
design, an entire numerical model with large-scale meshes was
created and the velocity profiles and pressure drops in the
primary side of the OTSG have been attained.
Through the analysis of case I, it is found that the △Pir in
the “tube-in-tube” nozzle accounts for a significant proportion
of the total △Pir, which is caused by the eddies and vortexes
induced at the corner of flow passage.
The correlation between the location of the “tube-in-tube”
nozzle and flow distribution has been investigated by the
comparison of three different structures of OTSG with different
positions of “tube-in-tube” nozzle. The flow distribution in
OTSG would be more uniform if the “tube-in-tube” nozzle is
set at a lower position. And it is recommended to set a rational
location of “tube-in-tube” nozzle for an even flow distribution.
A model of the OTSG with horizontal inlet tube was built
as a comparison of the OTSG with inclined inlet tube. And the
inclined inlet tube is beneficial to decrease the △Pir in the
“tube-in-tube” nozzle, as it induces smaller eddies and vortexes
and reduces the loss of flow head.
The work of this paper provides the theoretical base for the
design and optimization of helical-coil OTSG. The tube bundle
was simulated by porous media model, which could reflect, to
some extent, the pressure drop of coolant in bundle. However, it
needs to build a model in greater detail to more accurately
simulate the entire flow field, and this work will be launched in
the future.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by the Fundamental Research
Funds for Xiamen University (20720150095) and the
Foundation of Key Laboratory, Ministry of Education, P. R.
Chia (ARES201402).
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