NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF THERMAL RADIATION OF A CARTRIDGE LOOP

The Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) is a sodium-cooled fast reactor that is anticipated to provide with the infrastructure
and neutron spectrum needed to test fuels and materials for fast reactors. Currently, efforts are being made to design
and build a cartridge closed loop (CCL) to test prototypical fuels for gas-cooled fast reactors. To ensure the safe and
continuous operation of the cartridge loop, it is paramount to fully understand the heat transfer mechanisms that take
place within the CCL. One of the phenomena of interest that is being analyzed is thermal radiation, where temperature
measurements are gathered by the University of Idaho (UI) to determine the surface emissivity of a nuclear grade
silicon carbide (SiC) cladding sample. In this study, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models of the emissivity
measurement test chamber are executed to obtain a detailed visualization and quantification of different heat transfer
mechanisms that take place, and identify ideal operating conditions of the heater to better represent the heat load within
the CCL.