Results of Coupling a Thermal-Hydraulic Test Loop and University Research Reactor

The coupling of a university thermal-hydraulic test loop and a simulated reactor is presented. The thermal-hydraulic test loop used in this work is a one-half height scaled version of General Electric's Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (SBWR). The digitally simulated reactor exploits modal neutron kinetics equations up to the first harmonic, and governing equations are not linearized. The preserved nonlinearity makes the simulated reactor behave more realistically, and eigenfunction expansion to the first order lets half of the core be represented independently. A series of experiments are performed with the hybrid system including simulated control rod reactivity insertion/withdrawal, cross-mode interaction, etc. The experimental results are compared with the theoretical expectations. (authors)