Experimental and theoretical investigation of gas-liquid flow pressure drop across rupture discs

Experiments of air-water two-phase flow pressure drop through rupture discs have been carried out. The tested rupture discs of ON 25 and DN 40 are made of graphite with and without vacuum support. The experiments were performed under the following conditions of two-phase parameters; mass flux from 2000 up to 4000 kg/m(2) s, quality from 1 to 20% and system pressure from 3 to 7 bar. The results demonstrate that the effect of the above-mentioned parameters is very significant at high ranges of mass flow quality, due to the increasing of two-phase flow resistance, energy dissipations, friction losses and interaction of the two phases. Based on the presented experimental results and the data published in the literature, new correlation has been developed to calculate the two-phase pressure across rupture discs. The model includes the relevant primary influencing parameter, fit the data well, and is sufficiency accurate for engineering purposes. The reproductive accuracy of the proposed model and the statistical comparison, based on about 1000 measured data in the literature, demonstrated that the proposed model is the best overall agreement with the data. The standard deviation of the data is less than 10%. The results reported enable practical designs with standard products and optimization of the geometry of the rupture discs installed in nuclear reactors. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.