Experimental study on freezing behavior of molten metal on structure

Freezing behavior of molten metal during interaction with core structure was studied with respect to safety of liquid metal reactor (LMR). In this study, wood's metal (melting point 78.8°C) was used as a simulant melt while stainless steel and copper were used as freezing structures. A series of simulation experiments was conducted to study the freezing behavior of wood's metal during pouring up on the freezing structures immersed into the coolant. In the experiment, simulant melt was poured in a stainless steel tube and finally injected into coolants through nozzle to obtain the freezing behavior of the molten metal. The penetration length and width were measured in air coolant experiment where as the penetration length and amount of adhered frozen metal were measured in water coolant experiment. The melt flow and distribution were observed for both the experiments with a high-speed video camera. The experiment shows that higher penetration length and good adherence on structure was found in air coolant experiment than the water coolant experiment. The data obtained in this experiment can also be used as a reference database while simulating with relevant computational codes.