An application of the DEM-FFT method to predict the thermal conductivity of high burnup fragmented fuel

Abstract

Understanding Fuel Fragmentation, Relocation and Dispersal (FFRD) phenomena is a major item to predict the behavior of fuel rods in the event of a Pressurized Water Reactor loss-of-coolant hypothetical scenario. In order to introduce an effective medium for fragmented fuel that could be used in fuel performance codes, the heat transfer properties of $U{O}_2$ granular beds in He-Kr-Xe gas mixes was studied numerically. The Discrete Element Method was first used to compute the spatial arrangement of fragments only submitted to gravity with a representative granulometric distribution. These generated geometries were then transformed into a 3D grid (voxelized) to perform numerical homogenization and compute their effective properties using a Fast Fourier Transform solver for heat transfer. Different hypotheses were made in the voxelation process about the treatment of gas-solid and solid-solid interfaces, which in turn provided different estimates of the effective properties. Due to limits on the discretization and extended particle size distributions, a two-scale scheme was introduced and numerically tested against direct computations. For several granular beds, computed thermal conductivities were compared to analytical models for granular materials. Some heat transfer properties of fragmented fuel at several burnups were then computed, taking into account approximations for Knudsen and radiation size effects.