Flow boiling transient critical heat flux tests with stainless steel and FeCrAl: Transient correlation implementation, model calibration, and sensitivity analysis

•Demonstrated the capability of transient CHF prediction in a thermal hydraulics system code by using an empirical correlation between transient and steady-state CHFs•Calibrated boiling models enable more accurate predictions of cladding temperature response to the transient power insertion•Methods demonstrated in this paper can be further extended to better predict the thermal-hydraulic behavior of cladding during the transient accident progression analysis in PWR environments Steady-state and transient internal-flow critical heat flux (CHF) experiments were carried out under two flow conditions, at atmospheric pressure, on 316 stainless steel (316-SS) and iron-chromium-aluminum (FeCrAl) tubes. Slow power transients at a low mass flow (300kg/m2−s) with very low subcooling (Xe=−0.0054) generated premature CHFs, which were prevented by faster power transients and high mass flow (1,000kg/m2−s). The measured transient CHFs increased linearly with increasing power transients, compared with the steady-state CHF. Yet, the wall superheat at the CHFs decreased with faster power transients. Transient CHF correlations highlighting heterogeneous spontaneous nucleation were calibrated to the measured CHFs and compared with other existing correlations. Transient CHF multipliers were acquired from pool and flow boiling empirical CHF correlations that were generated. The multipliers were applied to the RELAP5-3D nuclear system code to analyze the discrepancies between the measured data and the predicted CHF and post-CHF behavior, which improved peak cladding temperature predictions by 24.6%. A variance-based global sensitivity study perturbing the experimental uncertainties and cladding material thermal properties showed the diminishing influence of flow boiling heat transfer with increasing power transients, highlighting the significance of the volumetric heat capacity for the cladding integrity during transients. Transient CHF correlations were applied to the most limiting design basis accident: a hot-zero-power reactivity-initiated accident on a generic pressurized water reactor RELAP5-3D model.