Thermochemical Equilibrium for Multiphysics Simulations of Nuclear Materials - Development of the corrosion modelling application Yellowjacket

Speaker: Parikshit Bajpai

Abstract: Nuclear materials are highly complex multiscale, multiphysics systems and an effective prediction of nuclear reactor performance and safety requires simulation capabilities that exhibit a very tight coupling between different physical phenomena. The Idaho National Laboratory’s Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) provides the computational foundation for performing such simulations and currently consists of the continuum scale fuel performance code Bison and the mesoscale phase field code Marmot. A new application called Yellowjacket is under development to directly couple thermodynamic equilibrium and kinetics in order to model corrosion in advanced reactors. As part of Yellowjacket, a thermochemistry code is being developed to provide rapid access to thermodynamic databases and perform thermochemical equilibrium calculations for a range of different materials, which is currently in its infancy. This talk describes the recent progress towards development of Yellowjacket and the plans for developing capabilities of practical interest to the nuclear industry.