| About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2023 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
|
| Symposium
|
Ceramic Materials for Nuclear Energy Research and Applications
|
| Presentation Title |
Multiphysics Modeling of High Burnup UO2 at Mesoscale |
| Author(s) |
Abdurrahman Ozturk, Merve Gencturk, David A. Andersson, Wen Jiang, Michael W.D. Cooper, Larry K. Aagesen, Mohammed Abdoelatef, Jason Harp, Karim Ahmed |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Abdurrahman Ozturk |
| Abstract Scope |
There is a growing interest from the U.S. nuclear industry to increase the fuel peak burnup (BU). However, it is well-established that for LWR fuels, the fission gas release rate and probability of fuel fragmentation rapidly increase at HBU, particularly during thermal transients associated with DBAs. While the underlying mechanisms of this behavior are still unclear, there is a consensus that the drastic change of microstructure across the fuel pellet during normal operation through the transient holds the key for understanding these mechanisms. By combining multi-physics modeling and quantitative characterization and measurements, we shed light on the role of microstructure heterogeneity on UO2 degradation at HBU. Particularly, we couple rate-theory, phase-field, and finite-element modeling methods to fully investigate the co-evolution of microstructure and thermo-mechanical properties of HBU UO2 pellets. The coupled approach can successfully explain the difference in the response of the structured and unstructured regions of the fuels. |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Planned: |
| Keywords |
Nuclear Materials, Computational Materials Science & Engineering, Modeling and Simulation |