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Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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Latest News
Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
Songbo Han, Xiaojun Ni, Jian Ge, Jinxin Sun
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 6 | August 2024 | Pages 792-801
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2259749
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The vacuum vessel (VV) of the China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR) was designed to withstand the variable structural loads resulting from dynamic excitation, such as seismic and plasma disruption. Modal analysis, a powerful tool, was used to evaluate the structural dynamic characteristics, such as frequency and mode shape. In addition, the CFETR VV has three different temperature conditions: room temperature (20°C), normal operation temperature (100°C), and baking temperature (200°C).
In this paper, in order to investigate the influence of such different temperature conditions to the dynamic behavior of the VV, three independent finite element analysis with the same modal analysis method were performed. According to analysis results, there are obvious thermal effects on the dynamic behavior, such as nature frequency and mode shape, among the different temperature cases for the CFETR VV. Moreover, the results show that the natural frequency for each order decreases as the temperature increases, and the mode shape of the VV also changed with temperature.
