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Studies of the material properties of nuclear graphite using the random finite element method

4th EDF Energy Nuclear Graphite Symposium. Engineering Challenges Associated with the Life of Graphite Reactor Cores;The University of Nottingham, Nottingham, England.2014.

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Abstract

The Random Finite Element Method (RFEM) has been adapted to determine the effect of the spatial variability of material properties in an Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor brick. The RFEM can be summarized as follows: (1) Generate a set of random fields; (2) Incorporate the random fields in a deterministic solver; (3) Analyse the statistical information of the response variables. Two different cases are proposed to study the influence of material properties variability. In the first case, a thermoelastic finite element analysis is employed to determine the effect of spatial variability of strains and stress distributions on a nuclear graphite brick. In this case, the chosen material properties are the Young’s Modulus and Coefficient of Thermal Expansion. For the second case, a methodology is proposed to measure the influence of porosity on the effective Young’s Modulus of graphite.