Seminar: Irradiation Experiment Design and Analysis

Dr. Christian Petrie, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

All dates for this event occur in the past.

E141 Scott Lab
E141 Scott Lab
201 W. 19th Ave.
Columbus, OH 43210
United States

The Thermal Hydraulics and Irradiation Engineering group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is responsible for the design, analysis, fabrication, and operation of a wide variety of irradiation experiments including nuclear fuels and materials irradiations and isotope production. The extremely high neutron and gamma flux and the resulting heat generation rates in facilities such as the High Flux Isotope Reactor or the Advanced Test Reactor require complex neutronic, thermal, and structural analyses. This seminar will discuss the typical design process for materials irradiation experiments and some of the challenges that must be overcome. One particular design of a SiC cladding irradiation experiment will be discussed in detail. This experiment is designed to investigate the evolving stress state in SiC cladding exposed to representative light water reactor conditions including intense neutron radiation under a prototypic high heat flux (and thus a large temperature gradient).

About the Speaker

Dr. Petrie is an R&D staff member and Alvin M. Weinberg Research Fellow in the Thermal Hydraulics and Irradiation Engineering group of the Reactor and Nuclear Systems Division at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He received his B.S. (2010) in Mechanical Engineering, and his M.S. (2011) and Ph.D. (2014) in Nuclear Engineering from The Ohio State University. His primary research interests are instrumentation for reactor applications, irradiation design and engineering, and radiation effects on nuclear fuels and materials. At ORNL Dr. Petrie is investigating fiber optic-based instrumentation for in-pile applications and he is the lead designer for a number of irradiation experiments performed in the High Flux Isotope Reactor, mostly to support the development of advanced nuclear fuel and cladding materials such as FeCrAl and SiC/SiC composites.

Hosted by Professor Tom Blue.