Fluid-Structure Interaction Experiments at the Cold Water Hammer Test Facility (CWHTF) of the FZ-Rossendorf

In existing NPPs water hammers can occur in case of an inflow of sub-cooled water into pipes or other parts of the equipment, which are filled with steam or steam-water mixture. They also may appear as the consequence of valve closing or opening actions or of breaks in pipelines, with single phase or two-phase flow. The influence of the fluid-structure interaction on the magnitude of the loads on pipe walls and support structures is not yet completely understood. The lack of experimental data obtained at well defined geometric boundary conditions is a significant obstacle for the validation of codes which consider fluid-structure interaction. Furthermore, up to now the feedback from structural deformations to the fluid mechanics is not fully implemented in existing calculation software codes. Therefore, at FZR a cold water hammer test facility (CWHTF) was designed and built up.