ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how fluids behave in a reactor when the coolant pumps are turned on and shows how fluids behave when the coolant pumps are turned off. The hydrostatic force that has the greatest effect on the behavior of static fluids is gravity. Once the size of the gravitational acceleration is specified, the pressure at every point in a fluid becomes a function of depth. Manometers are used to measure the pressure drop in a horizontal pipe when there is fluid flowing through it, and they can also be used to determine the effect of an area change on the pressure as one move through the pipe. Fluids in motion behave differently than fluids at rest. This is because the local pressure can be affected by the way in which a fluid moves. If the flow of a fluid happens to be laminar, large numbers of streamlines can sometimes cluster together to form what is called a stream tube.
