Critical Heat Flux: A Review of Recent Publications

Although much effort has been devoted to the subject of critical heat flux (CHF) during the last 20 years, the design correlations for CHF predictions in tubes, annuli, and rod bundles are still empirical and generally apply only to restricted ranges of parameters. Recently, experimental data on CHF large test sections have been obtained both in steam generators and reactor geometry. A survey of these new data and correlations gives a general picture of the state-of-the-art, linking the new and old results. Existing theoretical analyses stress the importance for future work. Additional experimental work is needed to optimize rod bundle correlations and to extend the validity of correlations to wider ranges and to unusual geometries. The indirect heating problem is not well understood, and continued efforts in theoretical analyses are needed.