As candidate tritium breeder materials for use in the ITER helium cooled pebble bed, ceramic multiphasic compounds lying in the region of the quasi-binary lithium metatitanate- lithium orthosilicate system may exhibit mechanical and physical advantag
es relative to single phase materials. Here we present an organometallic solution-based synthesis procedure for the low-temperature fabrication of compounds in the Li2TiO3 - Li4SiO4 region and investigate phase stability and transformations through temperature varied X-ray diffraction and scanning calorimetry. Results demonstrate that the metatitanate and metasilicate phases Li2TiO3 and Li2SiO3 readily crystallise in nanocrystalline form at temperatures below 180{deg}C. Lithium deficiency in the region of 5% results from Li sublimation from Li4SiO4 and/or from excess Li incorporation in the metatitanate phase and brings about a stoichiometry shift and product compounds with mixed lithium orthosilicate/ metasilicate content towards the Si rich region and predominantly Li2TiO3 content towards the Ti rich region. Above 1150{deg}C the transformation of monoclinic to cubic {gamma}-Li2TiO3 disordered solid-solution occurs while the melting of silicate phases indicates a likely monotectic type system with a solidus line in the region 1050{deg}-1100{deg}C. Synthesis procedures involving a lithium chloride precursor are not likely to be a viable option for breeder pebble synthesis as this route was found to yield materials with a more significant Li-deficiency exhibiting the crystallisation of the Li2TiSiO5 phase at intermediate compositions.
We investigate the effects of roughness and fractality on the normal contact stiffness of rough surfaces. Samples of isotropically roughened aluminium surfaces are considered. The roughness and fractal dimension were altered through blasting using di
fferent sized particles. Subsequently, surface mechanical attrition treatment (SMAT) was applied to the surfaces in order to modify the surface at the microscale. The surface topology was characterised by interferometry based profilometry. The normal contact stiffness was measured through nanoindentation with a flat tip utilising the partial unloading method. We focus on establishing the relationships between surface stiffness and roughness, combined with the effects of fractal dimension. The experimental results, for a wide range of surfaces, showed that the measured contact stiffness depended very closely on surfaces root mean squared (RMS) slope and their fractal dimension, with correlation coefficients of around 90%, whilst a relatively weak correlation coefficient of 57% was found between the contact stiffness and RMS roughness.
Due to neutron irradiation, solid breeder blankets are subjected to complex thermo-mechanical conditions. Within one breeder unit, the ceramic breeder bed is composed of spherical-shaped lithium orthosilicate pebbles, and as a type of granular materi
al, it exhibits strong coupling between temperature and stress fields. In this paper, we study these thermo-mechanical problems by developing a thermal discrete element method (Thermal-DEM). This proposed simulation tool models each individual ceramic pebble as one element and considers grain-scale thermo-mechanical interactions between elements. A small section of solid breeder pebble bed in HCPB is modelled using thousands of individual pebbles and subjected to volumetric heating profiles calculated from neutronics under ITER-relevant conditions. We consider heat transfer at the grain-scale between pebbles through both solid-to-solid contacts and the interstitial gas phase, and we calculate stresses arising from thermal expansion of pebbles. The overall effective conductivity of the bed depends on the resulting compressive stress state during the neutronic heating. The thermal-DEM method proposed in this study provides the access to the grain-scale information, which is beneficial for HCPB design and breeder material optimization, and a better understanding of overall thermo-mechanical responses of the breeder units under fusion-relevant conditions.
We develop a framework for constitutive modeling of unsaturated soils that has the embedded elements of lower scale grain to grain contacts. Continuum models developed from this framework will possess two different phases idealizing the solid grains
and their interactions. As a consequence, two different constitutive relationships, corresponding to the grain to grain contact and bulk behavior, co-exist in a constitutive model and govern the response of the model. To be specific, grain to grain sliding under dry or wet condition is idealized and appears as a simple contact law embedded in a continuum framework. There is no need to define plastic strain, as this quantity naturally emerges at the continuum scale as the consequence of frictional sliding at the lower scale. In addition, the effective stress can be naturally worked out from the grain to grain contact law embedded in the model without being subjected to any interpretation. This, in our opinion, is a closer representation of unsaturated soil behavior, compared to existing continuum approaches that map everything onto a single stress-strain relationship. In this paper, the framework is presented in its simplest form that takes into account sliding on a single orientation. Grain to grain contact law with capillary effects is used for the demonstration of the concept, and the technical details behind it. Generalization of the framework for better representation of unsaturated soil behavior will also be sketched out.
