• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.2
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• pp.223-228
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• 2018

AREVA NP (Courbevoie, Paris, France) is actively developing several enhanced accident-tolerant fuels cladding concepts ranging from near-term evolutionary (Cr-coated zirconium alloy cladding) to long-term revolutionary (SiC/SiC composite cladding) solutions, relying on its worldwide teams and partnerships, with programs and irradiations planned both in Europe and the United States. The most advanced and mature solution is a dense, adherent chromium coating on zirconium alloy cladding, which was initially developed along with the CEA and EDF in the French joint nuclear R&D program. The evaluation of the out-of-pile behavior of the Cr-coated cladding showed excellent results, suggesting enhanced reliability, enhanced operational flexibility, and improved economics in normal operating conditions. For example, because chromium is harder than zirconium, the Cr coating provides the cladding with a significantly improved wear resistance. Furthermore, Cr-coated samples exhibit extremely low corrosion kinetics in autoclave and prevents accelerated corrosion in harsh environments such as in water with 70 ppm Li leading to improved operational flexibility. Finally, AREVA NP has fabricated a physical vapor deposition prototype machine to coat full-length cladding tubes. This machine will be used for the manufacturing of full-length lead test rods in commercial reactors by 2019.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.929-946
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• 2017

Composite foundation treated with compaction piles can eliminate collapsibility and improve the bearing capacity of foundation in loess area. However, the large number of piles in the composite foundation leads to difficulties in the analysis of such type of engineering works. This paper proposes two simplified methods to quantify the stability of composite foundation treated with a large number of compaction piles. The first method is based on the principle of making the area replacement ratios of the simplified model as the same time as the practical engineering situation. Then, discrete piles arranged in a triangular shape can be simplified in the model where the annular piles and compacted soil are arranged alternately. The second method implements equivalent continuous treatment in the pile-soil area and makes the whole treated region equivalent to a type of composite material. Both methods have been verified using treated foundation of an oil storage tank. The results have shown that the differences in the settlement values obtained from the water filled test in the field and those calculated by the two simplified methods are negligible. Using stability analysis, the difference ratios of the static and dynamic safety factors of the composite foundation treated with compaction piles calculated by these two simplified methods are found to be 3.56% and 5.32%, respectively. At the same time, both static and dynamic safety factors are larger than the general safety factor, which should be greater than or equal to 2.0 according to the provisions in civil engineering. This indicates that after being treated with compaction piles, the bearing capacity of the composite foundation is effectively improved and the foundation has enough safety reserve.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.28 no.12
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• pp.702-708
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• 2018

This study deals with the effect of microstructure factors on the strain aging properties of API X70 pipeline steels with different microstructure fractions and grain sizes. The grain size and microstructure fraction of the API pipeline steels are analyzed by optical and scanning electron microscopy and electron backscatter diffraction analysis. Tensile tests before and after 1 % pre-strain and thermal aging treatment are conducted to simulate pipe forming and coating processes. All the steels are composed mostly of polygonal ferrite, acicular ferrite, granular bainite, and bainitic ferrite. After 1 % pre-strain and thermal aging treatment, the tensile test results reveal that yield strength, tensile strength and yield ratio increase, while uniform elongation decreases with an increasing thermal aging temperature. The increment of yield and tensile strengths are affected by the fraction of bainitic ferrite with high dislocation density because the mobility of dislocations is inhibited by interaction between interstitial atoms and dislocations in bainitic ferrite. On the other hand, the variation of yield ratio and uniform elongation is the smallest in the steel with the largest grain size because of the decrease in the grain boundary area for dislocation pile-ups and the presence of many dislocations inside large grains after 1 % pre-strain.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.579-588
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• 2022

In order to meet the needs of domestic reactor severe accident analysis program, a MIDAC (Module Invessel Degraded severe accident Analysis Code) is developed and maintained by Xi'an Jiaotong University. As the accuracy of the calculation results of the analysis program is of great significance for the formulation of severe accident mitigation measures, the article select three experiments to evaluate the updated severe accident models of MIDAC. Among them, QUENCH-06 is the international standard No.45, QUENCH-16 is a test for the analysis of air oxidation, and FROMA is an out-of-pile fuel rod melting experiment recently carried out by Xi'an Jiaotong University. The heating and melting model with lumped parameter method and the steam oxidation model with Cathcart-Pawel and Volchek-Zvonarev correlations combination in MIDAC could better meet the needs of severe accident analysis. Although the influence of nitrogen still need to be further improved, the air oxidation model with NUREG still has the ability to provide guiding significance for engineering practice.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.8
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• pp.2792-2800
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• 2022

In the core of the WWR-K reactor, a long-term irradiation of tristructural isotopic (TRISO)-coated fuel particles (CFPs) with a UO₂ kernel was carried out under high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR)-like operating conditions. The temperature of this TRISO fuel during irradiation varied in the range of 950-1100 ℃. A fission per initial metal atom (FIMA) of uranium burnup of 9.9% was reached. The release of gaseous fission products was measured in-pile. The release-to-birth ratio (R/B) for the fission product isotopes was calculated. Aspects of fuel safety while achieving deep fuel burnup are important and relevant, including maintaining the integrity of the fuel coatings. The main mechanisms of fuel failure are kernel migration, silicon carbide corrosion by palladium, and gas pressure increase inside the CFP. The formation of gaseous fission products and carbon monoxide leads to an increase in the internal pressure in the CFP, which is a dominant failure mechanism of the coatings under this level of burnup. Irradiated fuel compacts were subjected to electric dissociation to isolate the CFPs from the fuel compacts. In addition, nondestructive methods, such as X-ray radiography and gamma spectrometry, were used. The predicted R/B ratio was evaluated using the fission gas release model developed in the high-temperature test reactor (HTTR) project. In the model, both the through-coatings of failed CFPs and as-fabricated uranium contamination were assumed to be sources of the fission gas. The obtained R/B ratio for gaseous fission products allows the finalization and validation of the model for the release of fission products from the CFPs and fuel compacts. The success of the integrity of TRISO fuel irradiated at approximately 9.9% FIMA was demonstrated. A low fuel failure fraction and R/B ratios indicated good performance and reliability of the studied TRISO fuel.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.125-131
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• 2021

This study described the relationship of settlement-lateral displacement and settlement-heaving according to the DCM type using the model test results, in order to evaluate the behavioral characteristics of the soft ground improved with DCM. As a result, it was found that the total settlement of the model ground was relatively small in the soft ground, to which the DCM was applied, and the settlement was less in the order of the grid type, wall type, and pile type under the same load conditions. This trend was also the same for the lateral displacement and heaving. In addition, the relationship between settlement and lateral displacement of soft ground was analyzed to be similar to that of previous study (Leroueil et al., 1990). Therefore, the DCM of grid type was evaluated to be superior to other types for lateral flow and heaving in the improvement effect of soft ground.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.38 no.9
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• pp.53-67
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• 2022

Micropiles are cast-in-place-type piles with small diameters. They are widely used for the foundation reinforcement of existing buildings and structures because this technique is easy to construct and economic. A base expansion structure is developed following the mechanism of radial expansion at the pile tip under compression. Numerical analysis, durability tests, and centrifuge tests have been conducted using the base expansion structure. In this study, three-dimensional numerical modeling was performed to describe the behavioral mechanism of the base expansion structure using steel bar penetration under compressive loading, and numerical analyses using centrifuge test conditions were performed for the comparative studies. Additionally, the base structure was modified based on the results of lab-scale analyses, and the bearing capacities of micropiles were compared using field-scale numerical analyses under various ground conditions.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.13 no.9
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• pp.5-16
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• 2012

In the case of using the soil materials created by cutting in-situ ground directly without adjusting particle size, it is recommendable to seek the compaction property or material constant required for filling design or density control through indoor test, and many studies on this subject have been carried out during that time. The researches conducted during that time, however, were focused on the mixed materials with different diameters that exist in a natural condition. There has been no study conducted using coal fly ash that is by-product of the thermal power plant that is actively considered as the building materials. Therefore, this study was aimed at implementing compaction test and examining the basic engineering property in order to explore the influence of crushing the particles through compacting the admixture of crushed stone and coal fly ash produced from thermal power plant on its engineering property, and then the impact of the admixture volume of each material on compaction property and material property by conducting the One-Dimensional Compression Test. As result of compaction test, the optimum moisture ratio of coal fly ash was shown to be approx. 23%. As result of compaction test in accordance with the mixed ratio of coal fly ash and crushed stone under the same compaction energy and moisture ratio, dry unit weight tended to drop when the mixed ratio of coal fly ash exceeded 30%, while it reached approx. $1.81gf/cm^3$ when the mixed ratio was 30%. As result of One-Dimensional Compression Test in accordance with the mixed ratio of crushed stone and coal fly ash, the change in void ratio by particle crushing was at the highest level in the case of coal fly ash 100%, while the lowest level in the case of crushed stone 100%. In the case of mixed materials of crushed stone and coal fly ash, compression index was at the lowest level in case of coal fly ash 30%, and therefore this ratio of mixed material was judged to be the most stable from an engineering aspect.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.87-96
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• 2015

Geosynthetics are widely used in different ways such as reinforcement of structures in road, railway, harbor and dam engineering, drainage, separation and erosion prevention. They are especially applied to reinforced retaining wall and slope or ground reinforcement. Recently, geosynthetics reinforced pile supported (GRPS) embankment was developed to improve stability and construability of embankments in railway engineering. Extension strains are usually measured by strain gauges adhered to geosynthetics to evaluate the stability of geosynthetics. However, the measurements are influenced by manufacturing method and stiffness of geosynthetics and also adherence of strain gauge. In this study, wide-width tensile strength tests were performed on three types of geosynthetics including geogrid, woven geotextile and non-woven geotextile. During the test, strains of geosynthetics were measured by both video extensometer and strain gauges adhered to the geosynthetics and the measured results were compared. Results show that the measured results by strain gauges have high reliability in case of large stiffness geosythetics like geogrid and woven geotextile, whereas they have very low reliability for small stiffness geosythetics like non-woven geotextile.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.43-56
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• 2018

Vertical cutoff walls such as steel pipe sheet piles (SPSPs) have been commonly applied for the construction of the offshore waste landfill site. Because the SPSPs are sequentially installed by connecting their joints to those of adjacent piles, their mechanical stability should be ensured against the inherent external forces on the sea. The objective of this study is to evaluate the structural performances of the newly developed types of SPSP joint compared with those of other joint types. The problems of the traditional SPSP joints are investigated, and an advanced joint shape of SPSP, which is named double H with L-T (DHLT) joint, are designed for improving the constructability and maintenance. Full-scale models of the DHLT joint are manufactured, and then its joint areas are filled with grout material. After 28 days of curing time, compressive and tensile strength tests were performed on the joint models and the test results were compared with those of the traditional joints. Experimental results show that the structural capacities of the DHLT joint models are lower than those of traditional joints due to the influence of grout and steel members. In the cases of the compressive strength test, especially, bending occurs on steel H-beam with no distinct cracks in grout due to the asymmetrical structure of joint which has no reaction force. This study shows that the performance of the SPSP joint can be improved by considering the influence factors on the structural capacities estimated by the experimental tests.