Mechanical behaviors of the dispersion nuclear fuel plates induced by fuel particle swelling and thermal effect I: Effects of variations of the fuel particle volume fractions

A new method of modeling the in-pile mechanical behaviors of dispersion nuclear fuel elements is proposed. Considering the irradiation swelling together with the thermal effect, numerical simulations of the in-pile mechanical behaviors are performed with the developed finite element models for different fuel particle volume fractions of the fuel meat. The effects of the particle volume fractions on the mechanical performances of the fuel element are studied. The research results indicate that: (1) the maximum Mises stresses and equivalent plastic strains at the matrix increase with the particle volume fractions at each burnup; the locations of the maximum first principal stresses shift with increasing burnup; at low burnups, the maximum first principal stresses increase with the particle volume fractions; while at high burnups, the 20% volume fraction case holds the lowest value; (2) at the cladding, the maximum equivalent plastic strains and the tensile principal stresses increase with the particle volume fractions; while the maximum Mises stresses do not follow this order at high burnups; (3) the maximum Mises stresses at the fuel particles increase with the particle volume fractions, and the particles will engender plastic strains until the particle volume fraction reaches high enough.