OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
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The camera-observed fuel fragmentation & expulsion experiment (COFFEE) facility is a benchtop-scale flow loop and static fluid tank housed in the LIFT lab in the radiation center, which is investigating the explosive dispersion of fragmented nuclear fuel which may occur during a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA), one of the most limiting design-basis accidents in a nuclear reactor. This phenomena is especially important in modern operation of nuclear reactors as the push for higher burnup fuel necessitates re-evaluating the LOCA safety criteria, and the performance of fuel under such an accident.
The experimental facility houses 1:1 ratio geometries of standard pressurized water reactor (PWR) fuel rods in a square array. The single test rod in the experiment is filled with a surrogate nuclear fuel, and the remaining rods in the array are comprised of solid quartz rods. The working fluid in the system is a light mineral oil, which provides index of refraction matching to the quartz rods, rendering them transparent. This allows for optical access to the test rod, while maintaining the appropriate boundary conditions in the experiment. The test rod is connected to a charge line via a solenoid valve which allows for rapid blowdown of pressures up to 12 MPa. The subsequent dispersion of fuel is captured via two high-speed cameras in order to analyze the dispersion at both a high speed and resolution. Based on measurements from the high-speed particle data, drag coefficients of the fragmented fuel are extracted and input into a finite-element model which has been developed specifically for this application. The ultimate goal is to estimate fuel dispersion on a large scale to predict the movement and deposition location of fuel fragments post-rupture.
Facility Manager
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Trevor Kent Howard Assistant Professor Office: |
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Senior Associate Dean and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs Office: 541-737-3018 |