Cluster Dynamics Modeling with Bubble Nucleation, Growth and Coalescence
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States)
The topic of this communication pertains to defect formation in irradiated solids such as plasma-facing tungsten submitted to helium implantation in fusion reactor com- ponents, and nuclear fuel (metal and oxides) submitted to volatile ssion product generation in nuclear reactors. The purpose of this progress report is to describe ef- forts towards addressing the prediction of long-time evolution of defects via continuum cluster dynamics simulation. The di culties are twofold. First, realistic, long-time dynamics in reactor conditions leads to a non-dilute di usion regime which is not accommodated by the prevailing dilute, stressless cluster dynamics theory. Second, long-time dynamics calls for a large set of species (ideally an in nite set) to capture all possible emerging defects, and this represents a computational bottleneck. Extensions beyond the dilute limit is a signi cant undertaking since no model has been advanced to extend cluster dynamics to non-dilute, deformable conditions. Here our proposed approach to model the non-dilute limit is to monitor the appearance of a spatially localized void volume fraction in the solid matrix with a bell shape pro le and insert an explicit geometrical bubble onto the support of the bell function. The newly cre- ated internal moving boundary provides the means to account for the interfacial ux of mobile species into the bubble, and the growth of bubbles allows for coalescence phenomena which captures highly non-dilute interactions. We present a preliminary interfacial kinematic model with associated interfacial di usion transport to follow the evolution of the bubble in any number of spatial dimensions and any number of bubbles, which can be further extended to include a deformation theory. Finally we comment on a computational front-tracking method to be used in conjunction with conventional cluster dynamics simulations in the non-dilute model proposed.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-00OR22725
- OSTI ID:
- 1376497
- Report Number(s):
- ORNL/TM-2017/322
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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