SUPERCRITICAL VAPOR EXPLOSIONS - COMPARISONS BETWEEN THERMODYNAMIC AND MECHANISTIC MODELS

The thermal interaction of certain molten materials such as Al2O3 with water results in vapor explosions with very high (supercritical) pres sures and propagation velocities. A quasi-steady-state analysis and a transient analysis of a supercritical vapor explosion in one-dimension al multiphase flow were applied to analyze experimental data of an Al2 O3-water fuel/coolant interaction obtained from the KROTOS 26, 28, 29, and 30 tests. The shock adiabatic thermodynamic model and the TEXAS m echanistic model were used to perform this analysis. The predicted res ults of the initial vapor void fraction and explosion conversion ratio from both models, together with the estimated experimental results, f or the KROTOS 26 test were compared.