• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.650-659
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• 2016

As a type of accident-tolerant fuel, fully ceramic microencapsulated (FCM) fuel was proposed after the Fukushima accident in Japan. The FCM fuel consists of tristructural isotropic particles randomly dispersed in a silicon carbide (SiC) matrix. For a fuel element with such high heterogeneity, we have proposed a two-temperature homogenized model using the particle transport Monte Carlo method for the heat conduction problem. This model distinguishes between fuel-kernel and SiC matrix temperatures. Moreover, the obtained temperature profiles are more realistic than those of other models. In Part I of the paper, homogenized parameters for the FCM fuel in which tristructural isotropic particles are randomly dispersed in the fine lattice stochastic structure are obtained by (1) matching steady-state analytic solutions of the model with the results of particle transport Monte Carlo method for heat conduction problems, and (2) preserving total enthalpies in fuel kernels and SiC matrix. The homogenized parameters have two desirable properties: (1) they are insensitive to boundary conditions such as coolant bulk temperatures and thickness of cladding, and (2) they are independent of operating power density. By performing the Monte Carlo calculations with the temperature-dependent thermal properties of the constituent materials of the FCM fuel, temperature-dependent homogenized parameters are obtained.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1996.05a
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• pp.40-45
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• 1996

A new concept of equivalent homogenization is proposed. The concept employs new set of homogenized parameters: homogenized cross sections (XS) and interface matrix (IM), which relates partial currents at the celt interfaces. The idea of interface matrix generalizes the idea of discontinuity factors (DFs), proposed and developed by K.Koebke and K.Smith. The method of K.Smith can be simulated within framework of new method, while the new method approximates heterogeneous cell better in case of the steep flux gradients at the cell interfaces. The attractive shapes of new concept are: improved accuracy, simplicity of incorporation in the existing codes, equal numerical expenses in comparison to the K.Smith's approach. The new concept is useful for: (a) explicit reflector/baffle simulation; (b) control blades simulation; (c) mixed UO2/MOX core simulation, The offered model has been incorporated in the finite difference code and in the nodal code PANBOX. The numerical results show good accuracy of core calculations and insensitivity of homogenized parameters with respect to in- core conditions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.749-755
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• 2023

A new approximation method was proposed for treating the non-resonant spatial self-shielding effects of double heterogeneous region such as the double heterogeneous effect of VHTR fuel compact in the thermal energy range and that of BP compact with BISO. The method was developed based on the effective homogenization method and a spherical unit cell model with explicit coated layers and a matrix layer. The self-shielding factor was derived from the relation between the collision probabilities for a double heterogeneous compact and the effective cross section for the homogenized compact. First, the collision probabilities and transmission probabilities for all layers of the spherical model were calculated using conventional collision probability solver. Then, the effective cross section for the homogenized sphere cell representing the homogenized compact was obtained from the transmission probability calculated using the probability density function of a chord length. The verification calculations revealed that the proposed method can predict the self-shielding factor with a maximum error of 2.3% and the double heterogeneous effect with a maximum error of 200 pcm in the typical VHTR problems with various packing fractions and BP compact sizes.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.57 no.2
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• pp.369-387
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• 2016

In this work, random homogenization analysis for the effective thermal properties of a three-dimensional composite material with unidirectional fibers is presented by combining the equivalent inclusion method with Random Factor Method (RFM). The randomness of the micro-structural morphology and constituent material properties as well as the correlation among these random parameters are completely accounted for, and stochastic effective thermal properties as thermal expansion coefficients as well as their correlation are then sought. Results from the RFM and the Monte-Carlo Method (MCM) are compared. The impact of randomness and correlation of the micro-structural parameters on the random homogenized results is revealed by two methods simultaneously, and some important conclusions are obtained.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.62 no.8
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• pp.1120-1124
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• 2013

Our objective of this study was to reduce radio frequency coil (RF) control time at 3 T MRI systems. A compressed method is proposed with a convex optimization and pseudo-inverse method in multi-channel RF coils. After applying the proposed methods, fields are homogenized with less field data. Even with 80% compression, the fields are well homogenized and localized, indicating that mapping requires only 20% of the original data. Detailed values are compared between each compressed result in and outside the region of interest at 3 T.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.31 no.3 s.258
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• pp.388-394
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• 2007

Many engineering problems require the calculation of effective material properties of a structure which is composed of repeated micro-structures. The homogenization method has been used to calculate the effective (homogenized) properties of composites and several homogenization procedures for different physical fields have been introduced. This research describes the modified homogenization technique for magnetostatic problems. Assuming that the material is periodically repeated, its effective permeability can be prescribed by calculating the homogenized magnetic reluctivity using the finite element analysis of the micro unit cell. Validity of the suggested method is confirmed by comparing the results by the energy based method as well as the widely known homogenization method.

• International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.25-29
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• 2006

Analysis of structures which are composed of numerous repeated unit structures can be simplified by using homogenized properties. If the unit structure is repeated in one direction, the whole structure may be regarded as a beam. Once the effective stiffness is obtained from the analysis of the unit structure in a proper way, the effort for the detail modeling of the global structure is not required, and the real structure can be replaced simply with a beam. This study proposes a kinematical periodicity constraint to be imposed on the FE model of the unit structure, which improves the accuracy of the effective stiffness. The method is employed to a one dimensionally arrayed 3D structure containing periodically repeated unsymmetrical holes. It is demonstrated that the deformation behavior of the homogenized beam agrees well with that of the real structure.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.11
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• pp.2431-2441
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• 2020

Currently, the pin-by-pin homogenized solvers are a very active research field as they can, unlike the nodal codes, directly predict the local power, while requiring significantly less computational resources than the heterogeneous transport codes. This paper presents a recently developed pin-by-pin diffusion/SP3 solver Tortin, its spatial discretization method and the reflector treatment. Regarding the spatial discretization, it was observed that the finite difference method applied on pin-cell size mesh does not properly capture the big flux change between MOX and uranium fuel, while the nodal expansion method is more accurate but too slow. If the finite difference method is used with a finer mesh in the outer two pin rows of the fuel assembly, it increases the required computation time by only 50%, but decreases the pin power errors below 1% with respect to lattice code reference solutions. The paper further describes the coupling of Tortin with a microscopic depletion solver. Several verification tests show that the SP3 pin-by-pin solver can reproduce the heterogeneous transport solvers results with very good accuracy, even for fuel cycle depletion of very heterogeneous core employing MOX fuel or inserted control rods, while being two orders of magnitude faster.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.153-160
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• 2002

A new system identification method based on tunnel deformation data is proposed to find the damage in the lining structure. For this, an inverse problem in which the deformation data and dead load of concrete lining are known a priori is introduced to estimate the degree and location of the damages. Models based on uniform reduction of stiffness and homogenized crack concept are individually employed to compare the applicability and relative advantages of the models. Numerical analyses are peformed for the idealized tunnel structure and the effect of white noise, common in most measurement data, is also included to better understand the suitability of the proposed models. As a result, model 1 based on uniform stiffness reduction method is shown to be relatively insensitive to the noise, while model 2 with the homogenized crack concept is proven to be easily applied to the field situation since the effect of stiffness reduction is rather small.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.202-216
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• 1984

The success of coarse-mesh nodal solution methods provides strong motivation for finding homogenized parameters which, when used in global nodal calculation, will reproduce exactly all average nodal reaction rates for large nodes. Two approximate theories for finding these ideal parameters, namely, simplified equivalence theory and approximate node equivalence theory, are described herein and then applied to the PWR benchmark problem. Nodal code, ANM, is used for the global calculation as well as for the homogenization calculation. From the comparative analysis, it is recommended that homogenization be carried out only for the unique type of fuel assemblies and for core boundary color-sets. The use of approximate homogenized cross-sections and approximate discontinuity factors predicts nodal powers with maximum error of 0.8% and criticality within 0.1% error relative to the fine-mesh KIDD calculations.