Experimental Study on the Sealing Performance of Core Barrel Flange for Swimming Pool-Type Low-Temperature Heating Reactor

Abstract The core barrel of the swimming pool-type low-temperature heating reactor is completely sealed by the structure of the flange itself. The failure of flange sealing will affect the thermal efficiency and safety of the reactor. In order to study the sealing performance of the core barrel flange, an experimental facility for measuring the leakage rate of core barrel flange was established by our team. The studies include measurements on the sealing capacity of different flange structure and factors affecting the leakage rate of flange. It was found that the leakage rate of the convex flange was smaller than that of the concave flange and the flat flange under the same experimental conditions. Thus, the convex flange is an optimal structure for the core barrel flange. For the core barrel flange with the same structure, the leakage rate increases with the flange surface roughness or internal-external pressure difference. To reduce the leakage rate of the flange sealing surface, the flange surface roughness of Ra3.2 could be selected. Furthermore, the leakage rate depends on the flange surface pressure and the fluid temperature. The experiments show that the maximum leakage rate of the core barrel flange is about 0.0047kg/s.