In-pile Performance Simulation and Structure Design of Fully Ceramics Microencapsulated Fuel

The thermal mechanical performance of the fully ceramics microencapsulated fuel (FCM) with different non-fuel part size was simulated using two-dimensional characteristic unit. When the fissile loading meet the requirements of the reactor core, the stress condition of SiC matrix and SiC layers were investigated for FCM pellets with different structures. Non-fuel parts and SiC layers suffered relative lower stress by optimizing FCM pellet structure and adjusting distance between different TRISO particles. The stress distribution of matrix, non-fuel part and SiC layer was discussed for the FCM pellets with non-fuel part size from 100 μm to 500 μm. The results indicate that, the maximum hoop stress of the matrix and SiC layer increased with the increasing of non-fuel part size, while the non-fuel parts exhibited crosscurrent. Non-fuel parts and SiC layer possessed lower stress when the non-fuel part was 400 μm. The stress of non-fuel part was about 400 MPa, and the maximum hoop stress of the SiC layers were about 200 MPa. The failure probability was 2.5×10-4. The structure integrity was maintained for the pellets with 400 μm non-fuel part, at the same time the failure probability SiC layer was low. Structural optimization is the basis for the application of FCM pellet.