Uranium hydride corrosion. II Modeling spatially random growth using reaction and nucleation kinetics

Abstract A uranium hydride (UH3) corrosion kinetics model has been developed, based on dimensionally restricted nucleation kinetics, which combines heretofore separate reaction and nucleation kinetics models into a single predictive construct. This theoretical framework accounts for the superficial and random pitting behaviour of UH3 corrosion. The model can be used to generate the net corrosion surface area and volume fractions for a uranium specimen, generally accounting for its geometric form factor through the surface-to-volume ratio. The combined corrosion kinetics model enables the generation of quantities which may be directly compared to those obtained by non-destructive, non-contact evaluation methods.