Thermal Conductivity Modeling of U-Mo/Al Dispersion Fuel

Abstract

A dataset for the thermal conductivity of U-Mo/Al dispersion fuel made available by KAERI was reanalyzed. Using this dataset, an analytical model was obtained by expanding the Bruggeman model. The newly developed model considers thermal resistances at the interfaces between the U-Mo particles and Al matrix and the bonding between Al and Al in the Al matrix. The interfacial resistances are expressed as functions of U-Mo particle size and Al grain size that were empirically obtained by data fitting to the measured data. The new model was validated against an independently measured dataset by ANL.