A Study of Steam-Water Countercurrent Flow Model in TRACE Code

This paper studied the countercurrent flow model in the TRACE code version 5.0. Steam and water are chosen as the working fluids that flow counter-currently in a circular pipe. Three types of the countercurrent flow models, the Wallis, the Kutateladze and the Bankoff correlations, are investigated. A single pipe model was built for the studies of the Wallis and the Kutateladze correlations, and the variable in the calculation model is the pipe diameter. A perforated plate model was built to study the Bankoff correlation, and the variables include the pipe diameter, the hole diameter, the number of holes and the plate thickness. The hydraulic diameter of the pipe varies from 2.5–200 mm for validating both the Wallis and the Kutateladze correlations. While validating the Bankoff correlation, the hydraulic diameter of the pipe is of 50 and 200 mm, and the plate thickness changes as 10 and 40 mm. Through this study, we validate the countercurrent flow model in the TRACE code, and provides comments on the application ranges of these three correlations.