Numerical and experimental prediction of the thermomechanical performance of pebble beds for solid breeder blanket

In this paper, recent numerical modeling and experiment work for predicting the effective thermal and mechanical properties of solid breeder blanket p ebble bed materials is presented. The numerical modeling is based on the mi cro-mechanics displacement method in conjunction with an iterative process of successive releasing of the contact force of particles. Initial and fina l packed states for particle assembly and the contact forces for particles have been studied. In addition, a test article has been constructed to meas ure the thermal stress induced by the thermal expansion of the solid partic le and to estimate the characteristic properties of particle materials. Cor responding experiments are carried out with aluminum and Li2ZrO3 pebble bed s. Empirical correlations for the moduli of deformation are presented. Thes e experiment data are compared with the numerical modeling results. (C) 200 0 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.