Numerical Simulation of Subcooled Boiling Inside High-Heat-Flux Component with Swirl Tube in Neutral Beam Injection System

In order to realize steady-state operation of the neutral beam injection (NBI) system with high beam energy, an accurate thermal analysis and a prediction about working conditions of heat-removal structures inside high-heat-flux (HHF) components in the system are key issues. In this paper, taking the HHF ion dump with swirl tubes in NBI system as an example, an accurate thermal dynamic simulation method based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and the finite volume method is presented to predict performance of the HHF component. In this simulation method, the Eulerian multiphase method together with some empirical corrections about the inter-phase transfer model and the wall heat flux partitioning model are considered to describe the subcooled boiling. The reliability of the proposed method is validated by an experimental example with subcooled boiling inside swirl tube. The proposed method provides an important tool for the refined thermal and flow dynamic analysis of HHF components, and can be extended to study the thermal design of other complex HHF engineering structures in a straightforward way. The simulation results also verify that the swirl tube is a promising heat removing structure for the HHF components of the NBI system.