Numerical solution of the thermally‐assisted diffusion of hydrogen in zirconium alloys considering hysteresis and finite‐rate kinetics

Abstract

Presents a new method for the numerical simulation of diffusion with phase‐change. The method is able to handle hysteresis and finite‐rate kinetics in the phase‐change reaction. Such phenomena are frequent in solid‐solid phase transitions. The model problem discussed concerns hydrogen migration and hydride precipitation in zirconium and its alloys, a problem of interest to the nuclear industry. With respect to previous ones, our method is the first to incorporate an implicit treatment of diffusion, thus avoiding mesh‐dependent stability limits in the time step. The CPU time can in this way be reduced by a factor of 10–20 in applications. Addresses, through numerical studies, convergence with respect to mesh refinement and reduction of the time step. Also reports on an application of the method to the simulation of laboratory experiments. Shows that the method is a powerful tool to deal with general phase‐change problems, extendable to other physical systems.

Citation

Buscaglia, G.C. and Enrique, R.A. (1996), "Numerical solution of the thermally‐assisted diffusion of hydrogen in zirconium alloys considering hysteresis and finite‐rate kinetics", International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow, Vol. 6 No. 5, pp. 49-62. https://doi.org/10.1108/09615539610125962