• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.247-250
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• 2005

The need for improved fuel efficiency, weight reduction has motivated the automotive industry to focus on aluminum alloys as a replacement for steel-based alloy. To cope with the needs for high structural rigidity with low weight, it is forecasted that substantial amount of cast components will be replaced by tubular parts which are mainly manufactured by the extruded aluminum tubes. The extrusion process is utilized to produce tubes and hollow sections. Because there is no weld seam, the circumferential mechanical properties may be uniform and advantageous for hydroforming. However the possibility of the occurrence of a surface defect is very high, especially due to the temperature increase from forming at high pressure when it comes out of the bearing and the roughness of the bearing, which cause the surface defects such as the dies line and pick-up. And when forming a extruded aluminum tube, the free surface of the tube becomes rough with increasing plastic strain. This is well known as orange peel phenomena and has a great effect not only on the surface quality of a product but also on the forming limit. In an attempt to increase the forming limit of the tubular specimen, in the present paper, surface asperities generated during the hydroforming process are polished to eliminate the weak positions of the tube which lead to a localized necking. It is shown that the forming limit of the tube can be considerably improved by simple method of polishing the surface roughness during hydroforming. And also the extent of the crack propagation caused by dies lines generated during the extrusion process is evaluated according to the deformed shape of the tube.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.169-182
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• 2014

High-performance research reactors require fuel that operates at high specific power to high fission density, but at relatively low temperatures. Research reactor fuels are designed for efficient heat rejection, and are composed of assemblies of thin-plates clad in aluminum alloy. The development of low-enriched fuels to replace high-enriched fuels for these reactors requires a substantially increased uranium density in the fuel to offset the decrease in enrichment. Very few fuel phases have been identified that have the required combination of very-high uranium density and stable fuel behavior at high burnup. U-Mo alloys represent the best known tradeoff in these properties. Testing of aluminum matrix U-Mo aluminum matrix dispersion fuel revealed a pattern of breakaway swelling behavior at intermediate burnup, related to the formation of a molybdenum stabilized high aluminum intermetallic phase that forms during irradiation. In the case of monolithic fuel, this issue was addressed by eliminating, as much as possible, the interfacial area between U-Mo and aluminum. Based on scoping irradiation test data, a fuel plate system composed of solid U-10Mo fuel meat, a zirconium diffusion barrier, and Al6061 cladding was selected for development. Developmental testing of this fuel system indicates that it meets core criteria for fuel qualification, including stable and predictable swelling behavior, mechanical integrity to high burnup, and geometric stability. In addition, the fuel exhibits robust behavior during power-cooling mismatch events under irradiation at high power.