Heat Generation Effects on U-Mo/Al through ABAQUS FEM Simulation

U-Mo/Al dispersion fuels have been considered a most promising candidate for a replacement of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) fuel in many research reactors. Coulson developed a FEM model which show the fuel meat realistically and compared the thermal conductivity results of two and three dimensional model. Williams also developed a FEM model which are different from the former in that it use regularly meshed unit cells. He showed a heat generation effects through FEM simulation and the effective thermal conductivity of the fuel with heat generated in the fuel particles is a little lower than that of the fuel with no heat generated. In the current work, the heat generation effects are analyzed and discussed in a wider range of volume fraction with more realistic models by using ABAQUS finite element package. The FEM model is used to determine the effective thermal conductivity of U-Mo/Al and to simulate the heat generation effects in the study. This model reflected the microscopic morphology of the fuel very well by making random distribution particles although the particle shape is considered as sphere. All simulation results show the heat generation effects although the effects are small when the volume fraction of fuels are high. When the particles are surrounded with interaction layers, the heat transfer from the particle to matrix is disturbed by interaction layers due to the low thermal conductivity of interaction layers. However this effects decreases when the sum of the volume fraction of fuels and interaction layers exceeds 40-50 vol% because a great portion of the heat must pass through fuels and interaction layers although the heat is applied on the surface. Therefore particle size and initial particle volume fractions will be the important factors for the heat generation effects when interaction layers grow during irradiations