Development of measurement system for thermo-mechanical behavior of cladding in LOCA- simulated experiments

LOCA (loss of coolant accident) is one of major concerns related to safety issue of nuclear fuel. It has been investigated by numerous researchers [1-3]. From previous researches, various characteristics related to nuclear fuel and surrounding heat transfer phenomena could be revealed. However, most previous researches focused on separated effect tests on LOCA by studying either thermo-mechanical or thermo-hydraulic effect. On the other hand, because LOCA is multi-physics phenomena, it could be elucidated more deeply by conducting experiments with coupled phenomena. Therefore, an experiment for the multi-physics is required and it could be used to validate a multi-physics coupled safety analysis and to address a new LOCA acceptance criterion. In order to understand multi-physics phenomena in LOCA, an experiment facility named ICARUS (Integrated and Coupled Analysis of Reflood Using fuel Simulator) is established at the innovative system safety research division, KAERI. This facility is designed to simulate the thermo-mechanical and thermo-hydraulic phenomena of rod and its surrounding during transient rod deformation with injection of water before severe accident occurs (under temperature of 1200K). In this study, measurement system for thermo-mechanical behavior of the cladding is described and results from test-run experiments are presented.