Modeling the influence of bubble pressure on grain boundary separation and fission gas release

Pritam Chakraborty, Michael R. Tonks, Giovanni Pastore

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    15 Scopus citations

    Abstract

    Grain boundary (GB) separation as a mechanism for fission gas release (FGR), complementary to gas bubble interlinkage, has been experimentally observed in irradiated light water reactor fuel. However there has been limited effort to develop physics-based models incorporating this mechanism for the analysis of FGR. In this work, a computational study is carried out to investigate GB separation in UO2 fuel under the effect of gas bubble pressure and hydrostatic stress. A non-dimensional stress intensity factor formula is obtained through 2D axisymmetric analyses considering lenticular bubbles and Mode-I crack growth. The obtained functional form can be used in higher length-scale models to estimate the contribution of GB separation to FGR.

    Original languageEnglish (US)
    Pages (from-to)95-101
    Number of pages7
    JournalJournal of Nuclear Materials
    Volume452
    Issue number1-3
    DOIs
    StatePublished - Sep 2014

    All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

    • Nuclear and High Energy Physics
    • Materials Science(all)
    • Nuclear Energy and Engineering

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