• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.847-858
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• 2016

An overview is given on the work of the Laboratory of Nuclear Energy Systems at ETH, Zurich (ETHZ) and of the Laboratory of Thermal Hydraulics at Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Switzerland on tight-lattice bundles. Two-phase flow in subchannels of a tight triangular lattice was studied experimentally and by computational fluid dynamics simulations. Two adiabatic facilities were used: (1) a vertical channel modeling a pair of neighboring sub-channels; and (2) an arrangement of four subchannels with one subchannel in the center. The first geometry was equipped with two electrical film sensors placed on opposing rod surfaces forming the subchannel gap. They recorded 2D liquid film thickness distributions on a domain of $16{\times}64$ measuring points each, with a time resolution of 10 kHz. In the bubbly and slug flow regime, information on the bubble size, shape, and velocity and the residual liquid film thickness underneath the bubbles were obtained. The second channel was investigated using cold neutron tomography, which allowed the measurement of average liquid film profiles showing the effect of spacer grids with vanes. The results were reproduced by large eddy simulation + volume of fluid. In the outlook, a novel nonadiabatic subchannel experiment is introduced that can be driven to steady-state dryout. A refrigerant is heated by a heavy water circuit, which allows the application of cold neutron tomography.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.279-286
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• 2011

The aging degradation and lifetime assessment of a domestic class 1E Ethylene-Propylene-Diene-Monomer (EPDM), which is a popular insulating elastomer for electrical cables in the nuclear power plants, were studied for equipment qualification verification under the Loss of Coolant Accident (LOCA) conditions. The specimens were acceleratively aged, underwent a LOCA environment, as well as tested mechanically, thermo-gravimetrically, and spectroscopically according to the American Society of the Testing of Materials (ASTM) procedures. The tensile test results revealed that the elongation at break gradually decreased with an increasing aging temperature. The lifetime of EPDM aged isothermally at $140^{\circ}C$ was 1,316 hours and reduced to 1,120 hours after experiencing the severe accident test. The activation energies of the elongation reduction were $1.10{\pm}0.196$ eV and $0.93{\pm}0.191$ eV before and after the LOCA condition, respectively. The TGA test results also showed that the activation energy of the aging decomposition decreased from 1.35 eV to 1.02 eV after undergoing the LOCA environment. Although the mechanical property changes were discernibly observed during the aging process, along with the LOCA simulation, the FT-IR analysis showed that the spectroscopic peaks and their intensities did not alter significantly. Therefore, it can be concluded that the degradation of the domestic class 1E EPDM due to aging can be tolerable, even in severe accident conditions such as LOCA, and thus it qualifies as a suitable insulating material for electrical cables in the nuclear power plants.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.331-338
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• 2020

In this study, the characteristic of a 3-D micro-woven material, which is one of the newly developed periodic open-cell structure, is analyzed through various computational simulations. To increase the accuracy of the numerical simulations, the distance between each directional wire is parameterized using six design variables, and its model geometry is precisely discretized using tetrahedron elements. Using the improved computational model, the material properties of the mechanical, thermal, and fluidic behavior are investigated using commercial software and compared with the previous experimental results. By changing the space between the x- and y-directional wires, a parametric test is performed to determine the tendency of the change in the material properties. In addition, the correlation between two different material properties is investigated using the Ashby chart. The result can further be used in determining the optimal pattern and wire spacing in 3-D micro-woven materials.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.54 no.6
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• pp.255-261
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• 2005

Recently, the RF inductive discharge or inductively coupled plasma continues to attract growing attention as an effective plasma source in many industrial applications, the best known of which are plasma processing and lighting technology. To the point of lighting sources, the ring-shaped electrodeless fluorescent lamps utilizing an inductively coupled plasma have been objects of interest and research during the last decades, mainly because of their potential for extremely long life, high lamp efficacies, rapid power switching response. In this paper, maxwell 3D finite element analysis program (Ansoft) was used to obtain electromagnetic properties associated with the coil and nearby structures. The electromagnetic emitting properties were presented by 3D simulation software operated at 250 kHz and some specific conditions. The electromagnetic field in the ferrite core was shown to be high and symmetric. An LS-100 luminance meter and a Darsa-2000 spectrum analyzer were used in the experiment. According to data on the lamp tested using high magnetic field ferrite, the optical and thermal wave fields were shown to be high around the ring-shaped electrodeless fluorescent lamp. The optical or light field was high at the center of the bulb rather than around the ferrite core. The light conditions of the bulb were assumed to be complex, depending on the condition of the filler gas, the volume of the bulb, and the frequency of the inverter. Our results have shown coupling between the gas plasma and the field of the light emitted to be nonlinear.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.42-46
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• 2016

Hydrogen assisted cracking (HAC) is one of the most complicated problem in welding. Huge amount of studies have been done for decades. Based on them, various standards have been established to avoid HAC. But it is still a chronic problem in industrial field. It is well known that the main causes of the hydrogen crack are residual stress, crack susceptible micro structures and a certain critical level of hydrogen concentration. Even though the exact generating mechanism is unclear till today, it has been reported that the hydrogen level in the weld metal should be managed less than a certain amount to prevent it. Matsuda studied that the residual hydrogen level in the weld metal can be varied even if the initial hydrogen content is same. It is also insisted in this report that the residual hydrogen concentration is in stronger correlation with hydrogen crack than the initial hydrogen content. But, in practical point of view, the residual hydrogen is still hard to consider because measuring hydrogen level is time and cost consuming process. In this regard, numerical analysis is the only solution for considering the residual hydrogen content. Meanwhile, Takahashi showed the possibility of predicting the residual hydrogen by a rigorous FE analysis. But, few commercial software suitable for solving the weld metal hydrogen has been reported yet. In this study, two dimensional thermal - hydrogen coupled analysis was developed by using the commercial FE software MARC. Since the governing equation of the hydrogen diffusion is similar to the heat transfer, it is shown that the heat transfer FE analysis in association with hydrogen diffusion property can be used for hydrogen diffusion analysis. A series of simulation was performed to verify the accuracy of the model. For BOP (Bead-On-Plate) and the multi-pass butt welding simulations, remaining hydrogen contents in the weld metal is well matched with measurements which are referred from Kim and Masamitsu.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.384-388
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• 2016

Background: For a verification of newly-developed neutron absorbers, one of guidelines on the qualification and acceptance of neutron absorbers is the neutron attenuation test. However, this approach can cause a problem for the qualifications that it cannot distinguish how the neutron attenuates from materials. Materials and Methods: In this study, an estimation method of neutron absorption performances for materials is proposed to detect both direct penetration and back-scattering neutrons. For the verification of the proposed method, MCNP simulations with the experimental system designed in this study were pursued using the polyethylene, iron, normal glass and the vitrified form. Results and Discussion: The results show that it can easily test neutron absorption ability using single absorber model. Also, from simulation results of single absorber and double absorbers model, it is verified that the proposed method can evaluate not only the direct thermal neutrons passing through materials, but also the scattered neutrons reflected to the materials. Therefore, the neutron absorption performances can be accurately estimated using the proposed method comparing with the conventional neutron attenuation test. Conclusion: It is expected that the proposed method can contribute to increase the reliability of the performance of neutron absorbers.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.284-292
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• 2020

SiC-based devices perform well in high-voltage environments of more than 1200V compared to silicon devices, and are particularly stable at very high temperatures. Therefore, 1700V UMOSFET has been actively researched and developed for the use of electric power systems such as electric vehicles and aircrafts. In this paper, we analysed thermal variations of critical variables (breakdown voltage (BV), on-resistance (R_on), threshold voltage (v_th), and transconductance (g_m)) for the three type 1700V UMOSFETs-Conventional UMOSFET (C-UMOSFET), Source Trench UMOSFET (ST-UMOSFET), and Local Floating Superjunction UMOSFET (LFS-UMOSFET). All three devices showed BV increase, R_on increase, v_th decrease, and g_m decrease with increasing temperature. However, there are differences in BV, R_on, v_th, g_m according to the structural differences of the three devices, and the degree and cause of the analysis were compared. All results were simulated using sentaurus TCAD.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.36 no.8
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• pp.17-25
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• 2020

Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology has constructed a large scale Dust Thermal Vacuum Chamber to simulate extreme lunar terrestrial environments and to study the Moon as an outposts for space development and exploration. Although a large amount of KLS-1 (Korean Lunar Simulant-1) is required for research, its massive production is practically difficult. This paper describes semi-automatic manufacturing system for massive production of KLS-1 in detail, which is seven times more efficient than manual production. In addition, to increase the similarity with lunar regolith, hydrogen reduction reaction using ilmenite which is one of the minerals was also conducted to simulate nanophase Fe(0) which is the unique property of lunar regolith. As a result, it was found that np-Fe(0) was formed at a temperature of 700℃ or higher, and increased in proportion to the temperature until 900℃.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2017.05a
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• pp.735-737
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• 2017

An Off grid or remote solar electric systems are an energy supply to our home or to our companies without the utility of Grid at all. Off grid solar systems are very important for those who live in remote locations especially for developing countries where getting the electric grid is extremely expensive, inconvenient or for those who doesn't need to pay a monthly bill with the electric bill in general. The main critical components of any solar power system or renewable energy harvesting systems are the energy storage systems and its charge controller system. Energy storage systems are the essential integral part of a solar energy harvesting system and in general for all renewable energy harvesting systems. To provide an optimal solution of both high power density and high energy density at the same time we have to use hybrid energy storage systems (HESS), that combine two or more energy storage technologies with complementary characteristics. In this present work, design and simulation we use two storage systems supercapacitor for high power density and lithium based battery for high energy density. Here the system incorporates fast-response supercapacitors to provide power to manage solar smoothing and uses a battery for load shifting. On this paper discuss that the total energy throughout of the battery is much reduced and the typical thermal stresses caused by high discharge rate responses are mitigated by integrating supercapacitors with the battery storage system. In addition of the above discussion the off grid solar electric energy harvesting presented in this research paper includes battery and supercapacitor management system, MPPT (maximum power point tracking) system and back/boost convertors. On this present work the entire model of off grid electric energy harvesting system and all other functional blocks of that system is implemented in MATLAB Simulink.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2005.07a
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• pp.261-265
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• 2005

This paper describes the DC-DC Converter for Ancillary Power Supply in Hybrid Electric Vehicle. DC-DC Converter is used for charging 12V auxiliary battery supplying electric power to head ramp, audio, ECU etc in automobiles. used DC-DC Converter Topology is PS-ZVS FB(Phase Shifted Zero Voltage Switching Full-Bridge) to reduce switching loss and EMI noise induced by high frequency operating condition. And For easy compensation and stable system response characteristic, current mode control method including slope compensation is employed. Constant current / constant voltage charging control method guarantee stable electric charging of auxiliary battery. Simulation toll PSIM6.0 is used for initial circuit parameter settings and H/W debuging. Thermal problems of Switching components in DC-DC Converter is improved by using Thermo Tracer.