Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Impact of hydrogen on rupture behaviour of Zircaloy-4 nuclear fuel cladding during loss-of-coolant accident: a novel observation of failure at multiple locations

  • Suman, Siddharth (Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Patna)
  • Received : 2020.05.05
  • Accepted : 2020.07.12
  • Published : 2021.02.25
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Abstract

To establish the exclusive role of hydrogen on burst behaviour of Zircaloy-4 during loss-of-coolant accident transients, an extensive single-rod burst tests were conducted on both unirradiated as-received and hydrogenated Zircaloy-4 cladding tubes at different heating rates and internal overpressures. The visual observations of cladding tubes during bursting as well as post-burst are presented in detail to understand the effect of hydrogen concentration, heating rate, and internal pressure. Impact of hydrogen on burst parameters-burst stress, burst strain, burst temperature-during loss-of-coolant accident transients are compared and discussed. Rupture at multiple locations for hydrogenated cladding at lower internal pressure and higher heating rate is reported for the very first time. A novel burst criterion accounting hydrogen concentration in nuclear fuel cladding is proposed.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

I sincerely acknowledge the Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences (BRNS), Government of India No. 36(2)/14/30/2014-BRNS/1665 for providing the financial support needed to carry out the present work.

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