Simulación de la Migración de Hidrógeno en Aleaciones de Xirconio

Resumen

In this work, the phenomenos of hydrogem migration and hydride blister formation due to Pressure Tube/Calandria Tube contact in CANDU reactors is addressed. This problem is by now considereded as one of the factors limiting CANDU reactors lifetime, since Pickering incident (1983). A finite-element method is developed, based on a regularization of the constitutive equations and a Newton-Raphson iterative procedure, which allow the simulation of this phenomenon on arbitrary meshes. One dimensional results, in good agreement with quasi-analitical solutions, are included; together with some two-dimensional solutions which demostrate the capabilities of our scheme.