Review of heat transfer and pressure drop correlations for liquid metal in T/H system codes

This document aims to survey the studies widely conducted on the heat transfer models and pressure drops evaluation to be used in T/H system codes for the safety assessment of Liquid Metal Reactors, in particular devoted to wire-wrapped rod bundles (SFR-like). An overview of a wide set of empirical correlations for single-phase heat transfer in tubes and rod bundles for heavy liquid metal is given as well as the most extensively accepted methods to estimate the pressure drops on wire-wrapped rod bundle configurations, collecting the most valuable literature in these fields, without the claim to be exhaustive. Finally, the main heat transfer and pressure drop correlations are tested against a SFR-like rod bundle to verify their performances in predicting the thermal exchange between the clad and sodium coolant, and the pressure drops through the core in hexagonal wire-wrapped configuration. The results here obtained aim to improve the consistency of the simulations conducted with the system codes.