Burst investigation on zircaloy-4 claddings in inert environment

An extensive burst investigation has been carried out on the zircaloy-4 claddings in an inert environment to simulate clad burst during a postulated loss-of-coolant-accident (LOCA) conditions. The parameters varied during the burst experiments were heating rate and internal overpressure. The temperature, internal overpressure and ballooning data were monitored online and recorded during the heating process of burst specimen. In addition, post-experiment measurements were also conducted on the burst specimen to determine various burst parameters-burst strains and burst stress. A semi-empirical correlation was developed to predict the burst stress for a given burst temperature. A reasonable agreement between the predicted and experimental data has been observed. The proposed correlation was also compared with available established correlation for steam environment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.