Fracture behavior of thin-walled Zircaloy fuel clad tubes of Indian pressurized heavy water reactor

摘要

For structural integrity analysis of thin walled tubular components such as fuel claddings used in nuclear reactors, knowledge of valid fracture mechanics parameters are required. As axially-cracked thin tubes possess a non-standard geometry from the point of view of specimen fabrication, there is no direct straight forward way to derive their fracture mechanics parameters with known functions as can be done for standard test methods. In the present work, the J-R curve for an axially cracked fuel pin from Indian 220 MWe pressurized heavy water reactor is derived after experimental and analytical derivation of the required parameters and the results are compared with earlier published data for similar material.