Experimental studies of Micro- and Nano-grained UO₂: Grain Growth Behavior, Sufrace Morphology, and Fracture Toughness

Technical Report · Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1330575· OSTI ID:1330575

Miao, Yinbin ^[1]; Mo, Kun ^[1]; Jamison, Laura M. ^[1]; Lian, Jie ^[2]; Yao, Tiankai ^[2]; Bhattacharya, Sumit ^[3]

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1. Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
2. Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst., Troy, NY (United States)
3. Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States); Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL (United States)

This activity is supported by the US Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) Fuels Product Line (FPL) and aims at providing experimental data for the validation of the mesoscale simulation code MARMOT. MARMOT is a mesoscale multiphysics code that predicts the coevolution of microstructure and properties within reactor fuel during its lifetime in the reactor. It is an important component of the Moose-Bison-Marmot (MBM) code suite that has been developed by Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to enable next generation fuel performance modeling capability as part of the NEAMS Program FPL. In order to ensure the accuracy of the microstructure-based materials models being developed within the MARMOT code, extensive validation efforts must be carried out. In this report, we summarize the experimental efforts in FY16 including the following important experiments: (1) in-situ grain growth measurement of nano-grained UO₂; (2) investigation of surface morphology in micrograined UO₂; (3) Nano-indentation experiments on nano- and micro-grained UO₂. The highlight of this year is: we have successfully demonstrated our capability to in-situ measure grain size development while maintaining the stoichiometry of nano-grained UO₂ materials; the experiment is, for the first time, using synchrotron X-ray diffraction to in-situ measure grain growth behavior of UO₂.

• Research Organization: Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE). Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-06CH11357
• OSTI ID: 1330575
• Report Number(s): ANL/NE-16/12; 130669; TRN: US1700453
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
URANIUM DIOXIDE
NUCLEAR FUELS
GRAIN SIZE
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
FRACTURE PROPERTIES
GRAIN GROWTH
X-RAY DIFFRACTION
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
VALIDATION
MORPHOLOGY
SYNCHROTRON RADIATION
PERFORMANCE
STOICHIOMETRY
SURFACES
M CODES