| About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2023 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
|
| Symposium
|
Ceramic Materials for Nuclear Energy Research and Applications
|
| Presentation Title |
Multiscale Modeling for High-burnup Structure Formation in UO2 |
| Author(s) |
Sudipta Biswas, Larry K Aagesen, Sophie Blondel, Wen Jiang, Jia-Hong Ke |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Jia-Hong Ke |
| Abstract Scope |
In nuclear fuel, regions exposed to extended burnup exhibit a refined grain structure with large micron-sized bubbles, known as high-burnup structures (HBS). A multiscale multiphysics model is developed to evaluate the HBS formation and associated fission gas bubble evolution at the mesoscale. Here, the intra-granular gas evolution, including gas production, diffusion, clustering, and re-solution, is tracked by the spatially resolved cluster-dynamics code Xolotl. Whereas, the microstructural evolution, including grain subdivision and inter-granular fission gas bubble evolution, is handled by the MOOSE-based phase-field models. The cluster-dynamics model obtains the interface locations from the phase-field model and transfers the xenon monomers arriving at those interfaces. The coupled model captures the formation of HBS and associated bubble evolution reasonably well. The model demonstrates that at lower temperature higher re-solution rate releases Xe monomers that, due to accelerated GB diffusion, leads to the growth of existing bubbles and depletion of Xe concentration within grains. |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Planned: |
| Keywords |
Computational Materials Science & Engineering, Modeling and Simulation, Nuclear Materials |