• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.130-133
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• 2007

Fuel cladding tubes in nuclear fuel assembly are held up by supporting grids because the tubes are long and slender. Fluid flows of high-pressure and high-temperature in the tubes cause oscillating motions between tubes and supports. This is called as FIV (flow induced vibration), which causes fretting wear in contact parts of tube and support. The fretting wear of tube and support can threaten the safety of nuclear power plant. Therefore, a research about the fretting wear characteristics of tube-support is required. The fretting wear tests were performed with supporting grids and cladding tubes, especially after corrosion treatment on tubes, in water. The tests were done using various applied loads with fixed amplitude. From the results of fretting tests, the wear amounts of tube materials can be predictable by obtaining the wear coefficient using the work rate model. Due to stick phenomena the wear depth was changed as increasing load and temperature. The maximum wear depth was decreased as increasing the water temperatures. At high temperatures there are the regions of some severe adhesion due to stick phenomena.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.129-132
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• 2008

Fuel cladding tubes in nuclear fuel assembly are held up by supporting grids because the tubes are long and slender. Fluid flows of high-pressure and high-temperature in the tubes cause oscillating motions between tubes and supports. This is called as FIV (flow induced vibration), which causes fretting wear in contact parts of tube and support. The fretting wear of tube and support can threaten the safety of nuclear power plant. Therefore, a research about the fretting wear characteristics of tube-support is required. The fretting wear tests were performed with supporting grids and cladding tubes, especially after corrosion treatment on tubes, in water. The tests were done using various applied loads with fixed amplitude. From the results of fretting tests, the wear amounts of tube materials can be predictable by obtaining the wear coefficient using the work rate model. Due to stick phenomena the wear depth was changed as increasing load and temperature. The maximum wear depth was decreased as increasing the water temperatures. At high temperatures there are the regions of some severe adhesion due to stick phenomena.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1995.05a
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• pp.636-643
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• 1995

The accurate determination of the fuel-cladding gap conductance as functions of rod burnup and power level may be a key to the design and safety analysis of a reactor. The incorporation of a sophisticated gap conductance model into nuclear design code for computing thermal hydraulic feedback effect has not been implemented mainly because of computational inefficiency due to complicated behavior of gap conductance. To avoid the time-consuming iteration scheme, simplification of the gap conductance model is done for the current design model. The simplified model considers only the heat conductance contribution to the gap conductance. The simplification is made possible by direct consideration of the gas conductivity depending on the composition of constituent gases in the gap and the fuel-cladding gap size from computer simulation of representative power histories. The simplified gap conductance model is applied to the various fuel power histories and the predicted gap conductances are found to agree well with the results of the design model.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.14 no.7
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• pp.451-456
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• 2004

Thermal creep properties of the zirconium tube which was developed for high burnup application were evaluated. The creep test of cladding tubes after various final heat treatment was carried out by the internal pressurization method in the temperature range from $350^{\circ}C to 400^{\circ}C$ and from 100 to 150 MPa in the hoop stress. Creep tests were lasted up to 900days, which showed the steady-state secondary creep rate. The creep resistance of zirconium claddings was higher than that of Zircaloy-4. Factors that affect creep resistance, such as final annealing temperature, applied stress and alloying element were discussed. Tin as an alloying element was more effective than niobium due to solute hardening effect of tin. In case of advanced claddings, the optimization of final heat treatment temperature as well as alloying element causes a great influence on the improvement of creep resistance.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.205-214
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• 2021

Currently, the interim storage pools of spent fuels in South Korea are expected to become saturated from 2024. It is required to prepare an operation plan of a domestic dry storage facility during a long-term period, with the researches on safety evaluation methods. This study modified the FRAPCON code to predict the spent fuel integrity evaluation such as the axial cladding temperature, the hoop stress and hydrogen distribution in dry storage. The cladding temperature in dry storage was calculated using the COBRA-SFS code with the burnup information which was calculated using the FRAPCON code. The hoop stress was calculated using the ideal gas equation with spent fuel information such as rod internal pressure. Numerical analysis method was used to calculate the degree of hydrogen diffusion according to the hydrogen concentration and temperature distribution during a dry storage period. Before 50 years of dry storage, the cladding temperature and hoop stress decreased rapidly. However, after 50 years, they decreased gradually and the cladding temperature was below 400 K. The initial temperature distribution and hydrogen concentration showed a parabolic line, but hydrogen was transferred by the hydrogen concentration and temperature gradient over time.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.911-919
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• 2021

In this paper, the design stress intensity values for the plate-type fuel assembly for research reactor are presented. Through a tensile test, the material properties of the cladding (aluminum alloy 6061) and structural material (aluminum alloy 6061-T6), in this case the yield and ultimate tensile strengths, Young's modulus and the elongation, are measured with the temperatures. The empirical equations of the material properties with respect to the temperature are presented. The cladding undergoes several heat treatments and hardening processes during the fabrication process. Cladding strengths are reduced compared to those of the raw material during annealing. Up to a temperature of 150 ℃, the strengths of the cladding do not significantly decrease due to the dislocations generated from the cold work. However, over 150 ℃, the mechanical strengths begin to decrease, mainly due to recrystallization, dislocation recovery and precipitate growth. Taking into account the uncertainty of the 95% probability and 95% confidence level, the design stress intensities of the cladding and structural materials are established. The presented design stress intensity values become the basis of the stress design criteria for a safety analysis of plate-type fuels.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.663-667
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• 2017

Delayed hydride cracking (DHC) was first observed in pressure tubes in Canadian CANDU reactors. In light water reactors, DHC was not observed until the late 1990s in high-burnup boiling water reactor (BWR) fuel cladding. In recent years, the focus on DHC has resurfaced in light of the increased interest in the cladding integrity during interim conditions. In principle, all spent fuel in the wet pools has sufficient hydrogen content for DHC to operate below $300^{\circ}C$. It is therefore of importance to establish the critical parameters for DHC to operate. This work studies the threshold stress intensity factor ($K_{IH}$) to initiate DHC as a function of temperature in Zry-4 for temperatures between $227^{\circ}C$ and $315^{\circ}C$. The experimental technique used in this study was the pin-loading testing technique. To determine the $K_{IH}$, an unloading method was used where the load was successively reduced in a stepwise manner until no cracking was observed during 24 hours. The results showed that there was moderate temperature behavior at lower temperatures. Around $300^{\circ}C$, there was a sharp increase in $K_{IH}$ indicating the upper temperature limit for DHC. The value for $K_{IH}$ at $227^{\circ}C$ was determined to be $2.6{\pm}0.3MPa$ ${\surd}$m.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.48 no.8
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• pp.717-723
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• 2010

The degradation behavior of fuel cladding is a very import concern in nuclear power generation, because the operation of nuclear plants can be limited by fuel cladding degradation. In order to evaluate the hydride effect on failure of zirconium fuel claddings, a ring tensile test for the circumferential direction was carried out at room temperature for claddings having different hydride characteristics such as density and orientation; microstructural evaluation was also performed for those claddings. The circumferential failure of the claddings was promoted by increasing the hydride concentration in the matrix; however, the failure of the claddings was affected by the hydride orientation rather than by the hydride concentration in the matrix. From fracture surface observation, the cladding failure during the ring tensile test was matched with the hydride orientation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.10
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• pp.3379-3397
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• 2021

In this study, a multi-physics modeling method was developed to analyze a nuclear fuel rod's thermo-mechanical behavior especially for high temperature anisotropic creep deformation during ballooning and burst occurring in Loss of Coolant Accident (LOCA). Based on transient heat transfer and nonlinear mechanical analysis, the present work newly incorporated the nuclear fuel rod's special characteristics which include gap heat transfer, temperature and burnup dependent material properties, and especially for high temperature creep with material anisotropy. The proposed method was tested through various benchmark analyses and showed good agreements with analytical solutions. From the validation study with a cladding burst experiment which postulates the LOCA scenario, it was shown that the present development could predict the ballooning and burst behaviors accurately and showed the capability to predict anisotropic creep behavior during the LOCA. Moreover, in order to verify the anisotropic creep methodology proposed in this study, the comparison between modeling and experiment was made with isotropic material assumption. It was found that the present methodology with anisotropic creep could predict ballooning and burst more accurately and showed more realistic behavior of the cladding.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.161-170
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• 2022

The effect of oxidation time on the characteristics and mechanical properties of spent nuclear fuel cladding was investigated using Raman spectroscopy, tube rupture test, and tensile test. As oxidation time increased, the Raman peak associated with the tetragonal zirconium oxide phase diminished and merged with the Raman peak associated with the monoclinic zirconium oxide phase near 333 cm^-1. Additionally, the other tetragonal zirconium oxide phase peak at 380 cm^-1 decreased after 100 d of oxidation, whereas the zirconium monoclinic oxide peak became the dominant peak. The oxidation time had no effect on the tube rupture pressure of the oxidized zirconium alloy tube. However, the yield and tensile stresses of the oxidized nuclear fuel cladding tube decreased after 100 d of oxidation. The results of the scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy were represented with the in-situ Raman analysis result for the oxide characteristics generated on the cladding of spent nuclear fuel.