Abstract
An advanced tube-burst test system was designed to test samples of nuclear fuel cladding under conditions relevant to a postulated design-basis reactivity insertion accident (RIA) in light-water reactors. The system is based on the “driver tube” concept and allows for high-speed testing with internal pressure impulses of 10–1000 ms. To measure strain, the system was equipped with an ultra-high-speed video camera with a telecentric lens providing high focal depth, to compensate for specimen shift. A mirror system was developed to provide 360° view of the tube specimen into a single camera. Images taken during the test allow the use of a digital image correlation approach in strain evaluation. Several experiments were conducted to assess the performance of the experimental setup, and results are reported.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 30-38 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Annals of Nuclear Energy |
| Volume | 127 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 2019 |
Funding
This work was supported by the Advanced Fuels Campaign of the Nuclear Technology R&D program within the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy. The work was prepared under contact DE-AC05-00OR22725 with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, managed by UT-Battelle, LLC. Rick Lowden Jr. at ORNL assisted in the conduct of mechanical tests. The aid and technical assistance of Ken Yueh at Electric Power Research Institute is gratefully acknowledged. Prof. Nicholas Brown at Penn State University provided useful discussions.
Keywords
- Digital image correlation (DIC)
- Mirror setup
- Modified burst test
- Pellet–cladding mechanical interaction
- Rapid loading
- Reactivity-initiated accident
- Transient testing