| About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2025 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
|
| Symposium
|
Mechanical Behavior of Nuclear Reactor Materials and Components IV
|
| Presentation Title |
Finite element analysis of stress evolution of Cr-coated and FeCrAl-coated zircaloy fuel cladding tubes |
| Author(s) |
Artur Santos Paixao, Rijul Chauhan, Zhihan Hu, Frank Garner, Michael Nastasi, Lin Shao |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Artur Santos Paixao |
| Abstract Scope |
Coating has been proposed as a method to increase accident tolerance of zircaloy tubes in light water reactors. Chromium (Cr) and FeCrAl are two promising candidates due to their high-temperature strength and oxidation resistance. Many studies have focused on oxidation resistance and layer stability, but the effect of irradiation is less considered. Void swelling is one major issue that might impact coating-cladding interface stability due to additional stress introduced when two systems have different swelling resistance. Here, we use finite element analysis to evaluate the stress condition of the coating layer during normal operation and refueling. The interfacial stress has major contributions from thermal expansion and athermal effects from void swelling, which activate stress relaxation from irradiation creep. The relaxed systems appear to have the largest interfacial stress when the coated tubes are cooled down during refueling. The study is useful for risk analysis associated with coating concepts. |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Planned: |
| Keywords |
Nuclear Materials, Modeling and Simulation, Surface Modification and Coatings |