FEM heat transfer modelling with tomography-based SiCf/SiC unit cell

Modern industry has become increasingly reliant on composite materials for a variety of applications, and the nuclear industry is no exception to this. Among the materials being researched as Enhanced Accident Tolerant Fuels, ceramic matrix composites such as SiC-fiber-reinforced SiC (SiCf/SiC) figure as some prime candidates due to their excellent high temperature performances. SiCf/SiC so far shows adequate nuclear, mechanical and chemical properties; still, the thermal properties need further investigation. The thermal behavior of a material is an important factor for its performance as a nuclear fuel cladding, i.e. the first barrier encapsulating the fuel pellets. Many features determine the resulting properties of composite materials, such as matrix and fiber reinforcement properties and orientation, void fraction, and pore morphology. This study establishes a methodology to study the physical properties of composite materials and applies it to SiCf/SiC. A FEM model is used to characterize the thermal properties of a fundamental SiCf/SiC element, referred to as a �unit cell�, with the objective of accurately predicting the thermal properties of this complex class of materials where experimental data is often difficult to obtain. The unit cell is built based on data acquired with high-resolution tomographic microscopy performed at the TOMCAT beamline of the Swiss Light Source. By using phase-retrieval prior to tomographic reconstruction, the pores, fibers and matrix that compose the material can be distinguished in the data analysis. The separated information is processed to obtain geometrical information about the individual pores and fibers, which is then used to parametrize them as cylindrical objects. This allows constructing a FEM model of a cubic unit cell that is used to extract the effective thermal properties of SiCf/SiC. The analysis scheme includes steady-state and dynamic thermal transport simulations, which yield directional effective thermal conductivity and diffusivity values, respectively. Both modes of analysis show isotropic thermal conductivity values in the range of 71 W/m/K at room temperature, more than three times that of currently employed nuclear cladding materials. Combining these results with the data on the larger structural features of the material will lead to realistic results on the macroscopic thermal properties.