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Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Baoqing Liu, Ruijia Cheng, Yanan Zhang, Xiaoge Chen, Zilong Xu
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 189 | Number 3 | March 2018 | Pages 290-300
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2017.1394084
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fluid-elastic instability is the major factor in causing the vibration of tube bundles. Design guidelines on fluid-elastic instability in tube bundles is necessary to avoid damage due to excessive tube vibration. However, the design guidelines on fluid-elastic instability in tube bundles subjected to two-phase cross flow have no consistent conclusions. Accordingly, this technical note researches the vibration characteristics of three tube bundle distributions, namely, normal square tube bundles with pitch-to-diameter ratios of 1.28 and 1.32 and a normal triangular tube bundle with a pitch-to-diameter ratio of 1.32. Comparison of the present fluid-elastic threshold results with previously published data shows good agreement in single-phase flow. The effects of pitch-to-diameter ratio and tube bundle configurations on fluid-elastic instability induced by air-water cross flow were also compared and analyzed by measuring unstable behavior of tube bundles. It was found that fluid-elastic instability is more prone to occur with a decrease of pitch-to-diameter ratio and that the normal square tube bundle is more stable than the normal triangular tube bundle. From the perspective of the tube bundle configurations, it was recommended that the instability constant K in normal triangular and normal square tube bundles be 3.4 and 4.0, respectively.