• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제50권8호
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• pp.1412-1420
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• 2018

An experiment was performed using the large-scale test facility (LSTF), which simulated a 1% vessel upper head small-break loss-of-coolant accident with an accident management (AM) measure under an assumption of total-failure of high-pressure injection (HPI) system in a pressurized water reactor (PWR). In the LSTF test, liquid level in the upper head affected break flow rate. Coolant was manually injected from the HPI system into cold legs as the AM measure when the maximum core exit temperature reached 623 K. The cladding surface temperature largely increased due to late and slow response of the core exit thermocouples. The AM measure was confirmed to be effective for the core cooling. The RELAP5/MOD3.3 code indicated insufficient prediction of primary coolant distribution. The author conducted uncertainty analysis for the LSTF test employing created phenomena identification and ranking table for each component. The author clarified that peak cladding temperature was largely dependent on the combination of multiple uncertain parameters within the defined uncertain ranges.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제20권2호
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• pp.88-104
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• 1988

The FUel Rod Analysis(FURA) code is developed using two-dimensional finite element methods for axisymmetric and plane stress analysis of fuel rod. It predicts the thermal and mechanical behavior of fuel rod during normal and load follow operations. To evaluate the exact temperature distribution and the inner gas pressure, the radial deformation of pellet and clad, the fission gas release are considered over the full-length of fuel rod. The thermal element equation is derived using Galerkin's techniques. The displacement element equation is derived using the principle of virtual works. The mechanical analysis can accommodate various components of strain: elastic, plastic, creep and thermal strain as well as strain due to swelling, relocation and densification. The 4-node quadratic isoparametric elements are adopted, and the geometric model is confined to a half-pellet-height region with the assumption that pellet-pellet interaction is symmetrical. The pellet cracking and crack healing, pellet-cladding interaction are modelled. The Newton-Raphson iteration with an implicit algorithm is applied to perform the analysis of non-linear material behavior accurately and stably. The pellet and cladding model has been compared with both analytical solutions and experimental results. The observed and predicted results are in good agreement. The general behavior of fuel rod is calculated by axisymmetric system and the cladding behavior against radial crack is used by plane stress system. The sensitivity of strain aging of PWR fuel cladding tube due to load following is evaluated in terms of linear power, load cycle frequency and amplitude.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제26권3호
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• pp.389-400
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• 1994

The predictability of KAERI version of RELAP5/MOD3 on reflood peak cladding temperature during large break loss-of-coolant accident is assessed against 18 test runs in FLECHT SEASET test data. The associated uncertainty is statistically quantified. The selected test runs include a gravity feed test and several forced feed tests with wide range of the parameters such as flooding rate, system pressure, initial clad temperature, rod bundle power. The results show that the code under-predicts the peak cladding temperature by 7.56 K on average. The upper limit of the associated uncertainty at 95% confidence level is evaluated to be about 99 K, It including the bias due to the under-prediction.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers Conference
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• 한국윤활학회 2001년도 제34회 추계학술대회 개최
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• pp.245-251
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• 2001

A fretting wear tester is developed for experimental study on the fuel fretting problem of light water reactor. The feature of the developed tester is it can simulate the existence of gap between spring and fuel rod as well as different contacting force including the just-contact condition (0 N on the contact). Used are a servo-motor, an eccentric cylinder and lever mechanism for driving system. A spacer grid cell is constituted with four strap segments (each segment has a spring). This fretting wear tester can also be used as a fatigue tester of a spacer grid spring with the frequency of more than 10 Hz. It is required to simulate the frequency of the vibrating fuel rod due to flow-induced vibration in a reactor. In fretting wear test, up to two span-length of a fuel cladding tube can be accommodated. A specimen of cladding tube of one span-length is specially designed, which can be extended for two-span test. For .fatigue test, a device for clamping the spring fixture is installed additionally, Presently, the tester is designed for the condition of air environment and room temperature. The variation of the reciprocal distance is measured to check the stability of input force, which will be exerted to the cladding (for fretting wear. test) and the spring (for fatigue test) specimen.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• 제19권3호
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• pp.307-322
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• 2021

This study developed an analytical methodology for the mechanical integrity of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) cladding tubes under external pinch loads during transportation, with reference to the failure mode specified in the relevant guidelines. Special consideration was given to the degraded characteristics of SNF during dry storage, including oxide and hydride contents and orientations. The developed framework reflected a composite cladding model of elastic and plastic analysis approaches and correlation equations related to the mechanical parameters. The established models were employed for modeling the finite elements by coding their physical behaviors. A mechanical integrity evaluation of 14 × 14 PWR SNF was performed using this system. To ensure that the damage criteria met the applicable legal requirements, stress-strain analysis results were separated into elastic and plastic regions with the concept of strain energy, considering both normal and hypothetical accident conditions. Probabilistic procedures using Monte Carlo simulations and reliability evaluations were included. The evaluation results showed no probability of damage under the normal conditions, whereas there were small but considerably low probabilities under accident conditions. These results indicate that the proposed approach is a reliable predictor of SNF mechanical integrity.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Systems Engineering
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• 제16권2호
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• pp.67-77
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• 2020

Traditionally nuclear thermal hydraulic and nuclear safety has relied on numerical simulations to predict the system response of a nuclear power plant either under normal operation or accident condition. However, this approach may sometimes be rather time consuming particularly for design and optimization problems. To expedite the decision-making process data-driven models can be used to deduce the statistical relationships between inputs and outputs rather than solving physics-based models. Compared to the traditional approach, data driven models can provide a fast and cost-effective framework to predict the behavior of highly complex and non-linear systems where otherwise great computational efforts would be required. The objective of this work is to develop an AI algorithm to predict the peak fuel cladding temperature as a metric for the successful implementation of FLEX strategies under extended station black out. To achieve this, the model requires to be conditioned using pre-existing database created using the thermal-hydraulic analysis code, MARS-KS. In the development stage, the model hyper-parameters are tuned and optimized using the talos tool.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• 제31권1호
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• pp.31-35
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• 2022

The efficacy improvement of the light emitting diode (LED) was studied for the realization of small-size, low power consumption, and highly sensitive bio-sensor instrument. The performance of the LED with Mg delta-doping at the interface of AlGaN/GaN super-lattice in p type cladding layer was simulated. The device with Mg delta-doping showed improved current, radiative recombination rate, electroluminescence, and light output power compared to the conventional LED structure. Under the bias condition of 5 V, the improved device exhibited 20.8% increase in the light output power. This is attributed to the increment of hole concentration from stable ionization of Mg in p type cladding layer. This result is expected to be used for the miniaturization, power saving, and sensitivity improvement of the bio-sensor system.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제51권1호
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• pp.238-248
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• 2019

In the high-temperature and high-pressure irradiation environments, the multi-field coupling processes of hydrogen diffusion, hydride precipitation and mechanical deformation in Zircaloy cladding tubes occur. To simulate this hydrogen-induced complex behavior, a multi-field coupling method is developed, with the irradiation hardening effects and hydride-precipitation-induced expansion and hardening effects involved in the mechanical constitutive relation. The out-pile tests for a cracked cladding tube after irradiation are simulated, and the numerical results of the multi-fields at different temperatures are obtained and analyzed. The results indicate that: (1) the hydrostatic stress gradient is the fundamental factor to activate the hydrogen-induced multi-field coupling behavior excluding the temperature gradient; (2) in the local crack-tip region, hydrides will precipitate faster at the considered higher temperatures, which can be fundamentally attributed to the sensitivity of TSSP and hydrogen diffusion coefficient to temperature. The mechanism is partly explained for the enlarged velocity values of delayed hydride cracking (DHC) at high temperatures before crack arrest. This work lays a foundation for the future research on DHC.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• 제40권1호
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• pp.53.2-53.2
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• 2015

Fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) are the most compact and reliable method of suppressing atmospheric emission lines in the infrared for ground-based telescopes. It has been proved that real FBGs based filters were able to eliminate 63 bright sky lines with minimal interline losses in 2011 (GNOSIS). Inscribing FBGs on multi-core fibers offers advantages. Compared to arrays of individual SMFs, the multi-core fiber Bragg grating (MCFBG) is greatly reduced in size, resistant to damage, simple to fabricate, and easy to taper into a photonics lantern (PRAXIS). Multi-mode fibers should be used and the number of modes has to be large enough to capture a sufficient amount of light from the telescope. However, the fiber Bragg gratings can only be inscribed in the single-mode fiber. A photonic lantern bi-directionally converts multi-mode to single-mode. The number of cores in MCFBGs corresponds to the mode. For a writing system consisting of a single ultra-violet (UV) laser and phase mask, the standard writing method is insufficient to produce uniform MCFBGs due to the spatial variations of the field at each core within the fiber. Most significant technical challenges are consequences of the side-on illumination of the fiber. Firstly, the fiber cladding acts as a cylindrical lens, narrowing the incident beam as it passes through the air-cladding interface. Consequently, cores receive reduced or zero illumination, while the focusing induces variations in the power at those that are exposed. The second effect is the shadowing of the furthest cores by the cores nearest to the light source. Due to a higher refractive index of cores than the cladding, diffraction occurs at each core-cladding interface as well as cores absorb the light. As a result, any core that is located directly behind another in the beam path is underexposed or exposed to a distorted interference pattern from what phase mask originally generates. Technologies are discussed to overcome the problems and recent experimental results are presented as well as simulation results.

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• 제20권4호
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• pp.269-274
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• 2013

The present work investigated the dispersion behavior of $Y_2O_3$ particles into AISI 316L SS manufactured using laser cladding technology. The starting particles were produced by high energy ball milling in 10 min for prealloying, which has a trapping effect and homogeneous dispersion of $Y_2O_3$ particles, followed by laser cladding using $CO_2$ laser source. The phase and crystal structures of the cladded alloys were examined by XRD, and the cross section was characterized using SEM. The detailed microstructure was also studied through FE-TEM. The results clearly indicated that as the amount of $Y_2O_3$ increased, micro-sized defects consisted of coarse $Y_2O_3$ were increased. It was also revealed that homogeneously distributed spherical precipitates were amorphous silicon oxides containing yttrium. This study represents much to a new technology for the manufacture and maintenance of ODS alloys.