Dry In-Pile Fracture Test (DRIFT) Data
Description
A series of experiments were performed in 2021 in Idaho National Laboratory’s (INL’s) Transient Test Facility (TREAT) to characterize fracture in light water reactor (LWR) fuel pellets. These experiments, known as the Dry In-Pile Fracture Test (DRIFT) included both standard LWR fuel and a fuel concept consisting of thin fuel wafers separated by molybdenum disks for enhanced heat transfer. The test conditions, thermal response, and post-irradiation examination (PIE) images of the standard fuel have been documented in [1], and the PIE images of the wafer fuel have been documented in [2]. This data set provides three types of data: 1) Reactor power histories (in the 'reactor_power' directory): These are histories of the TREAT reactor power, and need to be multiplied by calibration factors as described in [1] to derive volumetric heating histories for the fuel and heat sink. These are provided in units of MW reactor power. 2) Temperature histories (in the 'temperature' directory): These consist of histories from the three thermocouples, two pyrometers, and from the distributed temperature sensor (DTS) optical fibers at a location 27.3 mm from the top of the heat sink, which is the axial center of the top three fuel pellets in the stack. These are all provided in units of degrees C. 3) Post-irradiation examination images of fractured fuel pellets (in the 'images' directory): These are stereoscopic images of the top and bottom of all pellets in each stack. There are also side images of the top four pellets on the each stack. The images are named as 'Sxx-y_Top.jpg', where 'xx' identifies the capsule and 'y' is the number of the pellet from the top of the stack, with pellet 1 being the top pellet. There are 'Top', 'Bottom', and 'Side' versions of these images indicate the view of the pellet. The side images are made by stitching together a series of images from many angles, giving a full 360 degree view of the side of the pellet. Note that there are no side images of the wafer fuel. References: 1) Benjamin W. Spencer, Nicolas E. Woolstenhulme, Jason L. Schulthess, Austin D. Fleming, Leigh A. Astle, D. Devin Imholte, Connie M. Hill, James R. Parry, Daniel B. Chapman, Charles P. Folsom, David Ban, Matthew R. Ramirez, Connor T. Woolum, Ju-Yuan Yeh, Mary Lou Dunzik-Gougar, Colby B. Jensen, and Daniel M. Wachs. Dry in-pile fracture test (DRIFT) for separate-effects validation of ceramic fuel fracture models. In review. 2) Jason L. Schulthess, Benjamin W. Spencer, Phillip G. Petersen, Nicolas E. Woolstenhulme, David Frazer, Laura Sudderth, James K. Jewell, Pavel Medvedev, and Robert D. Mariani. Experimental results of conductive inserts to reduce nuclear fuel temperature during nuclear volumetric heating. Technical Report INL/RPT-22-66447, Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Falls, ID, March 2022.
Files
Steps to reproduce
Refer to reference [1] given in the 'Description' for full details on the steps to reproduce this data.