Development of Nuclear Fuel Rod Testing Technique Using the Ultrasonic Resonance Phenomena
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KR9700258 KAERI/RR-1680/96 Development of Nuclear Fuel Rod Testing Technique Using the Ultrasonic Resonance Phenomena 29 - 0 j KAERI/RR-1680/96 Development of Nuclear Fuel Rod Testing Technique Using the Ultrasonic Resonance Phenomena M -? ts ffl % fir 1997 \i 2 € I7°i HEXT PA6E(S) left BLANK i. ^^pressurized water reactor: PWR)H 300 7fl^ ^^.^^-^(fuel bundle)!-^- ^ 200 <^7fl^ <23.-g-(fuel rod)^)-, ^ -^- :t.# fA5. ^^^i^-. ^S-^^r UO2 €3!, Zircaloy-4 ^ 4^:(cladding tube), #3^(plenum) >i^^ -f-^.^ ice inspection: ISI)°fl, 3-Z\3L 2iA}jL*]ig(post-irradiation examination: PIE) -f-ofl iii °) . H2flAi ^^(resonance scattering) , o] III. Ml* 3! ^^(acoustic resonance scattering: ARS)^ , O.?)JL 2 mm 7}< iation examination facility: PIEF)^ iv 4. (multilayered) ^"°fl £ 71*113. 7}^% S)^-^, 2)^-^4 « Afo^ 7^(gap)oH , ( ultrasound spectroscopy system: RUSS)# ^W. S.^:, ^^^ fl-S^l ^^-^ (leak-defective fuel rod detection system: LFRDS)- IV. £^ ^nr S!! ^(global matrix approach)^- M i?i#-i- a^7fl ^l(boundary matrix)"S VE ^, -2.^- ^Jfl^l-^ tfl^ ^l D-3 *!!•-£ (background) ^£-§- ^3* t}±= #£# A .Bnj^-1- 0>A}(analogous) -f oflHn]T^o] zero-frequency limit 3. cfl^s}-^ 3Mt)-. o] -n-^1 €^ zero-frequency limit 5.^ o] ^I, "JL-^afl^(inherent background)"AS. ai-fVti|) VI 1H tfl^ n 3J4 33-31 Oj AJ^ i^^S 5LEH turn table 4 2(x, y) ^ slide unit, monostatic pulse-echo bi-static pulse- echo «o^ 1.2 <>l*fl 3(x, y, z) ^ slide unit, A at 4. vii ISSXT FAGE(S) left BLANK SUMMARY I. Project Title Development of Nuclear Fuel Rod Inspection Technique Using Ultrasonic Resonance Phenomena II. Objective and Importance of the Project The core of the pressurized water reactors contain about three hundred fuel bundles. Each fuel bundle, which is of type of rectangular parallelpipe, consists of about two hundred fuel rods, some guide tubes, spacer grids, and top and bottom nozzles. Each fuel rod consists of uranium dioxide pellets, a Zircaloy-4 cladding tube, plenum spring(s), etc. The ends of the rod are sealed with end plugs by welding. Plenum is the internal space for accumulating the fission gases. For the safe and economic operation of a nuclear power plant, it is very important to secure the structural integrity of the cladding tube, which is the first barrier against the release of radioactive fission gases. Therefore a number of non-destructive testing (NDT) methods have been applied in the various stages of fuel manufacturing, in-service inspection (ISI) and post-irradiation examination (PIE). The current NDT methods to evaluate the extent of failure of in-service or spent fuel rods are the eddy current testing (ECT) and the ultrasonic testing (UT). The former is used to examine flaws in the cladding tube and the latter to detect the presence of water in the gap between cladding tube and pellet, which is indicative of cladding tube ix failure. ECT is also used to measure the thickness of oxide layer on the outside surface of the cladding tube and it is rather simpler than UT in view point of detecting flaws in the cladding tube, but it requires disassembling of the fuel bundle for testing. UT does not require the disassembling but its reliability is not so high that, in ISI, the leak-defective fuel rods detected by UT have been re-examined by ECT. There were many cases that a rod evaluated as a leak-defective fuel rod by UT is evaluated as a sound rod by ECT, and vice versa. Recently, a new UT technique has been developed, which has potential of detecting the water presence as well as flaws, dimensions and material property change of the cladding tube. This new technique takes advantage of ultrasonic resonance phenomenon which is attributed to elastic waves circumnavigating the tube (so-called "circumferential waves"). In the simulation experiment using a pre-irradiated fuel rod, it was already shown that this technique can detect the presence of water clearly. The purpose of this project is to apply the new UT technique to ISI and PIE. HI. Scope and Contents of the Project In the first year (1995) of this project, some basic techniques had been developed for modeling of the acoustic resonance scattering (ARS) by a nuclear fuel rod, measurement of ultrasonic resonances, and design and manufacturing process of thin (less than 2 mm) ultrasonic sensors. Particularly, an experimental system for measuring the resonances of a disassembled spent fuel rod was constructed at the post-irradiation examination facility (PIEF) in our institute and excellent detection ability of the new UT for the leak-defective fuel rods was successfully demonstrated. In the second year(1996), the ARS modeling code developed in the first year has been extended to be applicable to an multilayered cylindrical shell. An empty cladding tube, a fluid-filled cladding tube, a pre-irradiated fuel rod with helium gas gap, a leak- defective fuel rod with water gap, and an in-service or spent fuel rod with zirconium oxide layer on the outer and/or inner surfaces of the cladding tube can be dealt as an example of the multilayered cylindrical shell. And the resonant ultrasound spectroscopy system (RUSS) has been constructed to evaluate the effectiveness of the developed ARS modeling code. The leak-defective fuel rod detection system (LFRDS) of a laboratory scale has been also constructed to develop the ISI technique taking advantage of the resonances of the cladding tube. IV. Results and Proposal for Applications The scattering of plane acoustic waves normally incident on a multilayered cylindrical shell has been formulated using the global matrix approach. This is to represent each boundary condition as a matrix (so-called "boundary matrix") equation and to simply add all boundary matrix equations. Therefore this approach allows us to represent all boundary conditions as a single matrix (so-called "global matrix" or "system matrix") equation and to obtain the elements of the system matrix for any shell with arbitrary structure easily and correctly. A simple approach to formulate a non-resonant background component in the field scattered by an empty elastic shell has been founded. This is to replace the surface XI admittance for the shell with the zero-frequency limit of the surface admittance for the analogous fluid shell (i.e., where the shear wave speed in the elastic shell is set to zero). Justification for this replacement comes from noticing that, when the waves that give rise to resonances in the shell are damped out, the surface admittance is well approximated by that for the analogous fluid shell and is practically constant as a function of frequency. Therefore it can be hypothesized that the constant part of the surface admittance should be used to obtain the background and the simplest way to obtain this part for a nonattenuating shell, given there are no resonances to modify the surface admittance at zero frequency, is to extract it as the zero-frequency limit of the surface admittance for the fluid shell. It has been analytically and numerically shown that the background thus obtained, which is named "inherent background" here, is exact and applicable for shells of arbitrary thickness and material makeup, and over all frequencies and mode numbers. The exact expressions of the background components for multilayered shells of arbitrary structure have been founded using the inherent background approach and their effectiveness has been also demonstrated. The inherent background approach is applicable to other goemetries; for an example, the approach for spherical geometry is identical to that for cylindrical geometry, with the exception of replacing the cylinder functions by the corresponding spherical functions. RUSS has been constructed to measure the resonance spectrum of a single fuel rod and to evaluate the effectiveness of the developed ARS modeling code. It consists of an ultrasonic system, a scanner system, and a computer system. The ultrasonic system contains ultrasonic transducers, a pulser and receiver, and a waveform digitizer. The xu scanner system contains a water tank, a stepping motor driving turn-table and two-axis slide unit, and a motor controller. The computer system controls the scanner controller, the pulser and receiver, and the waveform digitizer, and it acquires and analyzes the scattered signals. The resonance spectrum of a fuel rod is obtained using the mono-static pulse-echo method, and the order of each resonance is determined using the bi-static pulse-echo method. The measured resonance spectrum is in good agreement with the spectrum predicted by the ARS modeling code. LFRDS of a laboratory scale has been constructed to develop the ISI technique. It consists of an ultrasonic flaw detector, an ultrasonic probe of thin (thickness of 1.2 mm) strip type, a scanner system, a standard (non-irradiated) fuel bundle, and a computer system. The scanner system contains an water tank, a stepping motor driving three-axis slide unit, and a motor controller. The computer system controls the scanner controller and it acquires and processes signals from the flaw detector. Particularly, all techniques and processes necessary for manufacturing the ultrasonic probe have been developed and some prototype probes have been manufactured. &EXT PAQE(S) I left BLANK iii 2. ^^>£ «n^7i# ?m 5 2.1. *\% 5 2.2. 31-f-^ ^ ^°fl tfltt i-n-wfl^ (inherent background) 8 2.2.1. ^^^] ^(scattering coefficient) 8 2.2.2. S^ iHnlHioll rfl^; ^^.^-i)^ JL^ 10 2.2.3. JL-frHfl ^ Til ^(inherent background coefficient) 14 2.2.4. -frs:^ ^^ 16 2.2.5. 7fl^^e) 20 2.3. W^ 4* €°11 21 *t -§-3|-^ ^^ 23 2.3.1. &A)$\ ^ 24 2.3.2. ^ ^ Kglobal matrix) 28 2.3.3.