Elastic moduli reduction in SiC-SiC tubular specimen after high heat flux neutron irradiation measured by resonant ultrasound spectroscopy

Singh, Gyanender; Koyanagi, Takaaki; Petrie, Christian M.; Deck, Christian P.; Terrani, Kurt A.; Arregui-Mena, José David; Katoh, Yutai

doi:10.1016/j.jnucmat.2019.06.026

Cited by 13 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Resonant Ultrasound Spectroscopy (RUS) was used to determine the elastic modulus of irradiated SiC/SiC samples. Significant bulk elastic moduli reduction (>13%) was observed, attributed to the presence of microcracking [20]. More post irradiation examinations are being performed to characterize the pathways of helium leaking and will be published elsewhere.…”

Section: Deuterium Permeation Of Neutron-irradiated Sic/sic Compositementioning

confidence: 99%

Report on Hydrogen Isotope Permeability/Hermeticity of SiC-based Cladding

Hu¹,

Koyanagi²,

Katoh³

2019

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The continuous SiC fiber-reinforced SiC matrix ceramic composites have been perceived as one of the leading candidate materials for accident tolerant fuel cladding in light water reactors. Potential loss of the fission products containment due to penetrating cracking has been identified as one of the most critical technical issues for SiC-based nuclear fuel cladding. As such, evaluation of the hermeticity of SiC/SiC composite cladding subject to ligh water reactor (LWR) relevant environment is critically important. In last two years, we have established the capability to measure the gas permeation flux through tubular samples and reported preliminary results of the hermeticity of unirradiated SiC/SiC composite tubes and one neutron irradiated Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) SiC tube. In this study, a permeation testing station was employed to measure the deuterium permeation of as-fabricated and coated SiC/SiC composite tubes following high heat flux neutron irradiation. The results indicate that CVD SiC tubes survived both the high and low heat flux neutron irradiations. SiC/SiC composite tubes with and without coating following high heat flux neutron irradiation lost gas tightness. Coating on SiC/SiC composite tubes helped to reduce the deuterium permeation flux compared to the uncoated samples. Better coating and/or improved architectural design and manufacturing quality is needed to ensure the hermeticity of SiC/SiC composite tubes. A more robust understanding of the correlation between applied gas pressure and measured leak rate is needed.

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Section: Deuterium Permeation Of Neutron-irradiated Sic/sic Compositementioning

confidence: 99%

Report on Hydrogen Isotope Permeability/Hermeticity of SiC-based Cladding

Hu¹,

Koyanagi²,

Katoh³

2019

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“…Coupled with in situ micro-XCT, Croom et al investigated the three-dimensional damage and stress redistribution mechanisms of braided SiC-SiC composites [16]. Singh et al utilized XCT to confirm the existing cracks, which were detected using resonant ultrasound spectroscopy [17]. Yuan et al have analyzed the toughening mechanism in the deformation and fracture processes using in situ, real-time 3D XCT data at room temperature and 1200 • C [18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-Scale Characterization of Porosity and Cracks in Silicon Carbide Cladding after Transient Reactor Test Facility Irradiation

Xu,

Yao,

et al. 2023

Energies

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Silicon carbide (SiC) ceramic matrix composite (CMC) cladding is currently being pursued as one of the leading candidates for accident-tolerant fuel (ATF) cladding for light water reactor applications. The morphology of fabrication defects, including the size and shape of voids, is one of the key challenges that impacts cladding performance and guarantees reactor safety. Therefore, quantification of defects’ size, location, distribution, and leak paths is critical to determining SiC CMC in-core performance. This research aims to provide quantitative insight into the defect’s distribution under multi-scale characterization at different length scales before and after different Transient Reactor Test Facility (TREAT) irradiation tests. A non-destructive multi-scale evaluation of irradiated SiC will help to assess critical microstructural defects from production and/or experimental testing to better understand and predict overall cladding performance. X-ray computed tomography (XCT), a non-destructive, data-rich characterization technique, is combined with lower length scale electronic microscopic characterization, which provides microscale morphology and structural characterization. This paper discusses a fully automatic workflow to detect and analyze SiC-SiC defects using image processing techniques on 3D X-ray images. Following the XCT data analysis, advanced characterizations from focused ion beam (FIB) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were conducted to verify the findings from the XCT data, especially quantitative results from local nano-scale TEM 3D tomography data, which were utilized to complement the 3D XCT results. In this work, three SiC samples (two irradiated and one unirradiated) provided by General Atomics are investigated. The irradiated samples were irradiated in a way that was expected to induce cracking, and indeed, the automated workflow developed in this work was able to successfully identify and characterize the defects formation in the irradiated samples while detecting no observed cracking in the unirradiated sample. These results demonstrate the value of automated XCT tools to better understand the damage and damage propagation in SiC-SiC structures for nuclear applications.

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“…The international effort to deploy ATFs has gained much attention over the past decade, and SiC/SiC composite fuel cladding remains an attractive option if concerns related to hydrothermal corrosion [14][15][16] and fission product retention during irradiation with significant thermal gradients [17][18][19][20][21][22] can be resolved.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%