Characterizing the corrosion behavior of nuclear fuel material in a high‐temperature hydrogen environment is critical for ascertaining the operational performance of proposed nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) concepts. In this paper, we describe an experimental study undertaken to develop and test non‐intrusive, laser‐based diagnostics for ultimately measuring the distribution of key gas‐phase corrosion products expected to evolve during the exposure of NTP fuel to hydrogen. A laser ablation technique is used to produce high temperature, vapor plumes from uranium‐free zirconium carbide (ZrC) and niobium carbide (NbC) forms for probing by various optical diagnostics including planar laser‐induced fluorescence (PLIF). We discuss the laser ablation technique, results of plume emission measurements, and we describe both the actual and proposed planar LIF schemes for imaging constituents of the ablated ZrC and NbC plumes. Envisioned testing of the laser technique in rf‐heated, high temperature gas streams is also discussed.
Measurement of fuel corrosion products using planar laser‐induced fluorescence
Proceedings of the tenth symposium on space nuclear power and propulsion ; 1993 ; Albuquerque, New Mexico (USA)
AIP Conference Proceedings ; 271 , 1 ; 237-244
1993-01-10
8 pages
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
Measurement of Fuel Corrosion Products using Planar Laser-Induced Fluorescence
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