Abstract
High-Temperature Reactor–Pebble-bed Module (HTR-PM) takes the spherical fuel element design. Failure or not of fuel sphere would highly affect system operation and nuclear safety. Crush strength of fuel sphere is an important quality control measure, which is mainly determined by the graphite matrix. A bonded particle model (BPM) from discrete element method (DEM) is disclosed, validated, and applied in the fracture analysis of brittle graphite sphere. On the basis of validated BPM, the breakage behavior of nuclear fuel sphere under high-speed impact, that is, dynamic loading, is revealed in detail by a time-marching numerical simulation. This meshfree particle method can be effectively extended to the failure computation of different composite structures (e.g., particle-reinforced metal matrix composite) by defining heterogeneous bonds inside distinct material interface.
Published Version
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