An Examination of Fuel and Graphite Temperatures in Two-Dimensional Cross Sectional Configurations of Fuel Elements

This report describes in detail the current method devised by the Project for prediction of fuel and graphite temperatures in transverse sections of fuel elements in which asymmetry of geometry and or thermal loading is such as to demand a two-dimensional analysis. Demonstration examples are presented for three problem types which serve to cover many separate aspects and from a study of these extrapolation to larger and more involved cases may be visualised. The coupled application of the Project's computer codes COCO, TAPIR and TACOR to the problems is described, and they are arranged in ascending order of complexity, emphasis being placed on the manipulation of the last mentioned code which has recently been completed for two-dimensional thermal analysis of multiply connected composited regions involving linear and nonlinear boundary conditions. The results presented, besides illustrating the method, also give some interesting information on existing and proposed fuel element concepts. (author)