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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.
Yiyang Zhang, Zhu Fang, Xinxin Wu, Haitao Wang, Libin Sun, Xiaowei Luo, Xiaowei Li (Tsinghua Univ)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 84-93
The graphite dust, produced by friction of fuel pebbles, is a significant concern in potential accidents of HTGR because the graphite dust is closely coupled with radioactive fission product. The study of graphite particle-wall impaction is important to accurately estimate deposition rate of graphite dust. In this paper, both the spherical and non-spherical particle-wall impaction process are discussed based on FEM. By combining derived adhesion force with FEM, the results agree well with JKR model. The damping dissipation is employed to describe the energy loss, corresponding dimensionless damping coefficient is defined to establish the relation between damping coefficient and material properties. Meanwhile, the results of non-spherical particle impaction are also well predicted by dimensionless damping coefficient. It is also shown both adhesion force and damping dissipation are important at low incident velocity, while the effect of adhesion force is negligible and the dissipation is the dominant mechanism at high incident velocity. Besides, the contact area remains perfectly elastic deformation and never gets into failure when the incident velocity is lower than 20 m/s due to size effect. The results provide a possible approach for non-spherical particle-wall impaction, which can be combined with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to estimate the deposition rate of graphite dust in HTGR.