abstract

• The nuclear fuel pellet is a sintered material with heterogeneous characteristics constituted of the solid- (fuel particle) and gas-phase (space between solids). For these fuel pellets, the volume averaging method (VAM) was applied to the equations governing mechanics at the microscale to calculate the upscaled elasticity modulus, which resulted in being a function of the porosity. The systematic application of VAM leads to one equation valid at pellet scales, which includes two effective tensors related to the elastic modulus and one new effective vector (interfacial elasticity coefficient) quantifying the deformation for strongly deformed materials. The analysis presented in this work considers the computation of the upscaled coefficients for four microstructure cases: slit, spherical-cup-slit, symmetric and asymmetric configurations with which is feasible to consider the different types of porosity that can occur within UO2 fuel during reactor operation. In addition, a Young%27s modulus correlation is proposed as a function of porosity and pressure that can be implemented in computational subroutines. © 2022

authors

• Aguilar-Madera C.G.
• Espinosa-Paredes G.
• Herrera Hernández Erik César

publication date

• 2022-01-01

funding provided via

• Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, CONACYT  Grant

published in

• Journal of Nuclear Materials  Journal

keywords

• Interfacial elasticity coefficient; Nuclear fuel; Sintered and porous material; Upscaled analysis; Young's modulus Elasticity; Nuclear fuels; Pelletizing; Porosity; Porous materials; Sintering; Uranium dioxide; Elasticity coefficients; Elasticity moduli; Interfacial elasticity; Interfacial elasticity coefficient; Porosity effect; Sintered and porous material; Sintered materials; Upscaled analyse; Volume averaging method; Young modulus; Elastic moduli

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1016/j.jnucmat.2022.153875

PubMed ID

start page

end page

volume

• 568

issue