Xiao Xiang, Zhou Guo Zheng, Wang Ke Qing, Xi Feng, Zeng Kun
School of Artificial Intelligence, Chong Qing Technology and Business University, Chongqing 400067, China.
SWS Hemodialysis Care Co., Ltd., Chongqing 401123, China.
Sensors (Basel). 2022 Oct 7;22(19):7606. doi: 10.3390/s22197606.
As protection for nuclear power plants is quite necessary, the nuclear fuel is sealed in zirconium alloy thin wall cladding. During service, fuel rods might be damaged caused by wall-thickness thinning, cladding corrosion and cracking, etc. This will cause the coolant to enter into the fuel rod, which may lead to the failure of the fuel assembly. However, current diagnostic methods have limitations due to the special structure of the fuel assembly and the underwater and radioactive environment. In this paper, a novel inspection method is proposed to recognize the failure of a fuel rod. The fuel rod failure can be detected based on the presence or absence of coolant inside the fuel rod by using an ultrasonic plate wave. The inspection model and process algorithm are proposed for in-service inspection. The relationship between signal and scanning position is established and analyzed. Both ultrasound field simulation and experiment have been carried out for validation. The corresponding results illustrate that the failed nuclear fuel rod of the whole fuel assembly (including the internal rods) can be effectively detected without the influence of the near-field region by using the proposed method.
由于对核电站进行防护非常必要，核燃料被密封在锆合金薄壁包壳中。在服役期间，燃料棒可能会因壁厚变薄、包壳腐蚀和开裂等原因而受损。这将导致冷却剂进入燃料棒，进而可能导致燃料组件失效。然而，由于燃料组件的特殊结构以及水下和放射性环境，目前的诊断方法存在局限性。本文提出了一种新颖的检测方法来识别燃料棒的失效情况。通过使用超声板波，根据燃料棒内部是否存在冷却剂来检测燃料棒的失效。提出了用于在役检测的检测模型和处理算法。建立并分析了信号与扫描位置之间的关系。进行了超声场模拟和实验以进行验证。相应结果表明，使用所提出的方法可以有效检测整个燃料组件（包括内部棒）中失效的核燃料棒，而不受近场区域的影响。
