Simulación de Experimentos de Combustibles Nucleares Utilizando DIONISIO FEM

Abstract

DIONISIO FEM is a new module incorporated into the DIONISIO code, developed by the Codes and Models Section of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Management, CNEA. This module uses the core of the fuel code, including the mesh generator, the materials library, the solvers of equations systems and finite element libraries, to simulate the pellets behavior subjected to different thermal conditions. Based on this framework, the FEM module solves a thermomechanical problem, in the required geometry, depending on the material and the physical and / or chemical models to be evaluated. The results obtained for the dimensional evolution suffered by a fuel pellet when it is subjected to a purely thermal history are presented. In general, simulations carried out with DIONISIO FEM achieved good agreement with the experimental data.