Engineering topics

Gaston, D. R.

Publications and source records attributed to Gaston, D. R..

4 records

DOE OSTI2014

BISON Contact Improvements CASL FY14 Report

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.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

DOE OSTI2014

Nuclear Fuels & Materials Spotlight Volume 4

As the nation's nuclear energy laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory brings together talented people and specialized nuclear research capability to accomplish our mission. This edition of the Nuclear Fuels and Materials Division Spotlight provides an overview of some of our recent accomplishments in research and capability development. These accomplishments include: • The first identification of silver and palladium migrating through the SiC layer in TRISO fuel • A description of irradiation assisted stress corrosion testing capabilities that support commercial light water reactor life extension • Results of high-temperature safety testing on coated particle fuels irradiated in the ATR • New methods for testing the integrity of irradiated plate-type reactor fuel • Description of a 'Smart Fuel' concept that wirelessly provides real time information about changes in nuclear fuel properties and operating conditions • Development and testing of ultrasonic transducers and real-time flux sensors for use inside reactor cores, and • An example of a capsule irradiation test. Throughout Spotlight, you'll find examples of productive partnerships with academia, industry, and government agencies that deliver high-impact outcomes. The work conducted at Idaho National Laboratory helps to spur innovation in nuclear energy applications that drive economic growth and energy security. We appreciate your interest in our work here at INL, and hope that you find this issue informative.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

DOE OSTI2013

Algorithms for thermal and mechanical contact in nuclear fuel performance analysis

The transfer of heat and force from UO{sub 2} pellets to the cladding is an essential element in typical nuclear fuel performance modeling. Traditionally, this has been accomplished in a one-dimensional fashion, with a slice of fuel interacting with a slice of cladding. In this manner, the location at which the transfer occurs is set a priori. While straightforward, this limits the applicability and accuracy of the model. We propose finite element algorithms for the transfer of heat and force where the location for the transfer is not predetermined. This enables analysis of individual fuel pellets with large sliding between the fuel and the cladding. The simplest of these approaches is a node on face constraint. Heat and force are transferred from a node on the fuel to the cladding face opposite. Another option is a transfer based on quadrature point locations, which is applied here to the transfer of heat. The final algorithm outlined here is the so-called mortar method, with applicability to heat and force transfer. The mortar method promises to be a highly accurate approach which may be used for a transfer of other quantities and in other contexts, such as heat from cladding to a CFD mesh of the coolant. This paper reviews these approaches, discusses their strengths and weaknesses, and presents results from each on simplified nuclear fuel performance models. (authors)

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

DOE OSTI2013

Massive hybrid parallelism for fully implicit multiphysics

As hardware advances continue to modify the supercomputing landscape, traditional scientific software development practices will become more outdated, ineffective, and inefficient. The process of rewriting/retooling existing software for new architectures is a Sisyphean task, and results in substantial hours of development time, effort, and money. Software libraries which provide an abstraction of the resources provided by such architectures are therefore essential if the computational engineering and science communities are to continue to flourish in this modern computing environment. The Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) framework enables complex multiphysics analysis tools to be built rapidly by scientists, engineers, and domain specialists, while also allowing them to both take advantage of current HPC architectures, and efficiently prepare for future supercomputer designs. MOOSE employs a hybrid shared-memory and distributed-memory parallel model and provides a complete and consistent interface for creating multiphysics analysis tools. In this paper, a brief discussion of the mathematical algorithms underlying the framework and the internal object-oriented hybrid parallel design are given. Representative massively parallel results from several applications areas are presented, and a brief discussion of future areas of research for the framework are provided. (authors)

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗