Three-dimensional flow measurement of a water flow in a sphere-packed pipe by digital holographic PTV

A water cooled ceramic breeder for ITER and DEMO of a nuclear fusion reactor plays a significant role in the design of a blanket module. Pebbles of a ceramic tritium breeder are packed in a container of the blanket. Investigation of the flow behavior is necessary in an actual environment of a facility where pressure drop takes place under a complex flow such as in case of the container for the pebble bed. For the development of a facility, it is necessary to be able to monitor fluid motion of a basic flow such as a sphere-packed pipe (SPP). In the present study, to discern the complex flow structures in SPP, digital holographic PTV visualization is carried out by a refractive index-matching method using a water employed as a working fluid. The water is chosen to be able to adjust its refractive index to match to that of the MEXFLON pebble with an index of 1.33. Hologram fringe images of particles behind the spheres can be observed, and the particles' positions can be reconstructed by a digital hologram. Consequently, 3-D velocity-fields around the spheres are obtained by the reconstructed particles' positions. The velocity between pebbles is found to be convergence and divergence regions in the SPP. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.