Instrumentation Development and Validation for an Experimental Two-Phase Blowdown Facility

An experimental facility was designed and built to study the loading on steam generator tubes during a blowdown. The facility used refrigerant R-134a and measurements were taken for static and dynamic pressures as well as tube loading and temperatures. Commissioning experiments indicated that the off-the-shelf dynamic pressure transducers and load cells could not take the mechanical and thermal shock loading caused by the blowdown and produced …