Multi-Physics, Multi-Scale Coupled Simulation of Power Impulse Experiments

The major goal of the peridynamics development for this project in FY18 is to enable the use of peridynamics for modeling long-term behavior of nuclear fuel. Previous efforts focused on modeling early-life fuel fracture, which can be modeled using elastic-fracture models. To model accident scenarios for high-burnup fuel, it is necessary to include realistic models of long-term fuel behavior. To this end, peridynamics capability development thus far in FY18 has been focused on enabling the use of arbitrary mechanical material constitutive models with peridynamics. This involves the development of a self-stabilized peridynamic correspondence model based on the concept of bond-associated deformation gradients, which permits the use of arbitrary continuum models within peridynamics without material instability issues. This developed technique has been documented in journal publications. Further work of this year will focus on following two major aspects: 1). Continue to work on getting the peridynamics capabilities merged as a module into the MOOSE framework. This will allow the use of peridynamic capabilities with all of the material models in the MOOSE TensorMechanics module, as well as the set of models for nuclear fuel in Bison. 2). Continue to develop effective failure criterion for fracture modeling using the developed bond-associated correspondence model, and apply the developed technique to model combined creep and fracture in nuclear fuels under extended irradiation times using the creep models available in Bison.