Estimation of elastic properties of nuclear fuel material using longitudinal ultrasonic velocity – A new approach

A novel methodology has been suggested for estimation of elastic properties of nuclear fuel materials based on porosity and longitudinal ultrasonic velocity. New correlations have been proposed between the elastic moduli, namely, the Young's modulus, shear modulus, bulk modulus and Poisson's ratio, and the longitudinal ultrasonic velocity. The theoretical predictions agreed extremely well with data reported for uranium dioxide and uranium nitride, respectively. The proposed method promises to be extremely useful for non-destructive evaluation of elastic properties of irradiated fuel materials which are not amenable to shear velocity measurements due to extreme fragility.

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