• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.441-444
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• 2000

The recycling process for reuse of uranium in the spent fuels consists various unit processes and the decladding process to extract the spent fuel pellet from the zirconium-based cladding is the beginning process of the recycling. There are two methods - mechanical and chemical - in the decladding process. In this paper, the mechanical decladding device by using a motor as a driving part and a press pin to separate the pellets from tube has been developed. This device was automated and modularized to make the remote operation and maintenance easy.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.15 no.9
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• pp.1274-1280
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• 2001

The fretting wear behavior of the contact between Zircaloy-4 tube and Inconel 600, which are used as the fuel rod cladding and grid, respectively, in PWR nuclear power plants was investigated in air. In the study, number of cycles, slip amplitude and normal load were selected as the main factors of fretting wear. The results indicated that wear increased with load, slip amplitude and number of cycles but was affected mainly by the slip amplitude. SEM micrographs revealed the characteristics of fretting wear features on the surface of the specimens such as stick, partial slip and gross slip which depended on the slip amplitude. It was found that fretting wear was caused by the crack generation along the stick-slip boundaries due to the accumulation of plastic flow at small slip amplitudes and by abrasive wear in the entire contact area at high slip amplitudes.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.312-318
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• 2002

A study on the change of mechanical properties and oxidation behavior of Zircaloy-4 fuel cladding after exposing at 90$0^{\circ}C$ and $1000^{\circ}C$ for various periods of exposure time under the steam atmosphere was carried out. The growth of the $ZrO_2$ layer combined with an oxygen-rich-phase layer into the Zircaloy tube material can be described by an expression, E = 1.1√Dt + $2 $\times$ 10^{-4}$ . The tensile strength of Zircaloy tubes increased for a short period of exposure time and decreased rapidly with further exposure while the hoop strength was not decreased greatly. In the meantime, the axial and circumferential elongations of oxidized Zircaloy tubes were decreased drastically with increasing exposure time as a result of embrittlement phenomena.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.202-211
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• 1998

Interfacial stresses at two-material interfaces and initial displacement field over the entire domain are obtained by modifying the potential energy functional with a penalty function, which enforces continuity of the stresses at the interface of two materials. Based on the initial displacement field and interfacial stresses, a new methodology to generate a continuous stress field over the entire domain has been proposed by combining the modified projection method of stress-smoothing and Loubignac's iterative method of improving the displacement field. Stress analysis is carried out on two examples made of dissimilar materials : one is a two-material cantilever composed of highly dissimilar materials and the other is a zirconium-lined cladding tube made of slightly dissimilar materials. Results of the analysis show that the proposed method provides an improved continuous stress field over the entire domain, and accurately predicts the nodal stresses at the interface, while the conventional displacement-based finite element method produces significant stress discontinuities at the interface. In addition, the total strain energy evaluated from the improved continuous stress field converges to the exact value in a few iterations.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.297-301
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• 2006

We have fabricated a multi-mode nonlinear plastic optical fiber (POF) using organic nonlinear optical materials and demonstrated the propagation of light. The refractive indices of core and cladding are 1.5240 and 1.5172. We made a POF preform by rod-in tube method. The core diameter of the fabricated POF is about $30{\mu}m$. We evaluated the temperature characteristics of POF. The sensitivity is $0.345{\;}mW/^{\circ}C$ and the linearity of sensor was good.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.490-497
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• 1999

A hydrogen determinator was modified and installed in the glove box to analyse total hydrogen content in irradiated zircaloy tube. The analysis method of hydrogen is Inert Gas Fusion(IGF)-Thermal Conductivity Detection(TCD). The hydrogen recoveries of no tin method using Ti and Zr matrix standards, respectively, were available within $3{\mu}g$ of hydrogen. Also the smaller size of sample showed the better hydrogen recovery. It was found that the hydrogen standard of Ti matrix is avaliable to hydrogen analysis in zircaloy sample. The mean radioactivity of irradiated zircaloy sample was 10 mR/hr and hydrogen concentration was 130 ppm.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.140-145
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• 2002

This study was conducted to investigate the brazing characteristics between Zircaloy-4 nuclear fuel cladding tubes and bearing pads with filler metals of amorphous $Zr_{1-x}Be_x$(0.3$\leq$x$\leq$0.5) binary alloy, in which they were produced in the ribbon form by the melt-spinning metod. The crystallization behavior, stability, hardness and micro-structure of brazed zone were examined by X-ray diffraction, differential scanning calorimetry, micro-Vickers hardness test, optical microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. $Zr_{1-x}Be_x$(0.3$\leq$x$\leq$0.4) amorphous alloys were crystallized to $\alpha$-Zr with increasing the temperature, and the rest were transformed to ZrBe$_2$at higher temperatures. On the other hand, $Zr_{1-x}Be_x$(0.4$\leq$x$\leq$0.5) amorphous alloys were crystallized to $\alpha$-Zr and ZrBe$_2$, simultaneously. The thickness of the layer brazed with amorphous alloy was increased with increasing the beryllium content due to the higher diffusion of Be. The morphology of brazed layer with PVD Be filler metal showed dendrite while that brazed with amorphous alloys appeared globular. Micro-Vickers hardness of brazed zone increased as the beryllium content of filler metal was decreased.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.364-372
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• 2008

In this study, the circumferential creep behaviors ofpilgered advanced Zirconium alloy tubes such as Zr-Nb-O and Zr-Nb-Sn-Fe were investigated in the temperature range of $400\sim500^{\circ}C$ and in the stress range of 80$\sim$150MPa. The test results indicate that the stress exponent for the steady-state creep rate of the Zr-Nb-Sn-Fe alloy decreases with the increase of stress(from 6$\sim$7 to 4), while that of the Zr-Nb-O alloy is nearly independent of stress(5$\sim$6). The activation energy of creep deformation is found to be nearly the same as the activation energy for Zr self diffusion. This indicates that the creep deformation may be controlled by dislocation climb mechanism in Zr-Nb-O. On the other hand, the transition of stress exponent(from 6-7 to 4) in Zr-Nb Sn-Fe strongly suggests the transition of the rate controlling mechanism at high stresses. The lower stress exponent at high stresses in Zr-Nb-Sn-Fe can be explained by the dynamic deformation aging effect caused by interaction of dislocations with Sn substitutional atoms.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.43-46
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• 2010

As the nuclear power plant has been constructed continuously for several decades in Korea, the welding technology for components manufacturing and installation has been improved largely. Standardization for weld test and qualification was also established systematically according to the concerned code. The welding for the main components requires the high reliability to keep the constant quality level, which means the repeatability of weld quality. Therefore the weld process qualified by thorough test and evaluation is able to be applied for manufacturing. Narrow gap SAW and GTAW process are usually applied for girth seam welding of pressure vessel like Reactor vessel, steam generator, and etc. For the surface cladding with stainless steel and Inconel material, strip welding process is mainly used. Inside cladding of nozzles is additionally applied with Hot wire GTAW and semi-auto welding process. Especially the weld joint having elliptical weld line on curved surface needs a specialized weld system which is automatically rotating with adjusting position of the head torch. The small sized pipe, tube, and internal parts of reactor vessel requests precise weld processes like an automatic GTAW and electron beam welding. Welding of dissimilar materials including Inconel690 material has high possibility of weld defects like a lack of fusion, various types of crack. To avoid these kinds of problem, optimum weld parameters and sequence should be set up through the many tests. As the life extension of nuclear power plant is general trend, weld technologies having higher reliability is required gradually. More development of specialized welding systems, weld part analysis and evaluation, and life prediction for main components should be taken into a consideration extensively.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.157-166
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• 2014

A light water reactor (LWR) fuel rod consists of zirconium alloy cladding tube and uranium dioxide pellets with a slight gap between them. The modeling of heat transfer across the gap between fuel pellets and the protective cladding is essential to understanding fuel behavior under irradiated conditions. Many researchers have been developing fuel performance codes based on finite element method (FE) to calculate temperature, stress and strain for multidimensional analysis. The gap conductance model for multi-dimension is difficult issue in terms of convergence and nonlinearity because gap conductance is function of gap thickness which depends on mechanical analysis at each iteration step. In this paper, virtual link gap element (VLG) has been proposed to resolve convergence issue and nonlinear characteristic of multidimensional gap conductance. In terms of calculation accuracy and convergence efficiency, the proposed VLG model has been evaluated for variable cases.