BISON Contact Improvements CASL FY14 Report
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
The BISON code is the foundation for multiple fuel performance modeling efforts, and is currently under heavy development. For a variety of fuel forms, the effects of heat conduction across a gap and mechanical contact between components of a fuel system are very significant. It is thus critical that BISON have robust capabilities for enforcement of thermal and mechanical contact. BISON’s solver robustness has generally been quite good before mechanical contact between the fuel and cladding occurs, but there have been significant challenges obtaining converged solutions once that contact occurs and the solver begins to enforce mechanical contact constraints. During the current year, significant development effort has been focused on the enforcement of mechanical contact to provide improved solution robustness. In addition to this work to improve mechanical contact robustness, an investigation into questionable results attributable to thermal contact has been performed. This investigation found that the order of integration typically used on the surfaces involved in thermal contact was not sufficiently high. To address this problem, a new option was provided to permit the use of a different integration order for surfaces, and new usage recommendations were provided.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 1170326
- Report Number(s):
- INL/EXT-14-33285
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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