Abstracts and Available Papers Presented at the
2002 International RERTR Meeting

ATOMISTIC MODELLING OF THE INTERDIFFUSION OF Al IN THE UMo BASED FUEL

Jorge E. Garcés ^a,b, Armando C. Marino ^a and Guillermo Bozzolo ^b,c

^a Centro Atómico Bariloche, Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica, 8400 Bariloche, Argentina

^b Ohio Aerospace Institute, 22800 Cedar Point Rd., Cleveland, OH 44142, USA

^c NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, OH 44135, USA

ABSTRACT

The analysis of the initial stages and trends in the process of interdiffusion of Al in the UMo solid solution as a function of Mo concentration is made using the BFS method for alloys. The approach presented in this work helps to understand the exchange mechanism between adatoms and substrate atoms in the binary systems, leading to the behavior observed in the ternary Al-U-Mo system. While in Al/U Al atoms show a noticeable tendency to interdiffusion in the bulk, in Al/Mo the same atoms show a tendency to layer-by-layer growth and the formation of structures in the overlayer. In the case of Al/U‑Mo, the two competing behaviors observed for Al/Mo and Al/U, translate into the role of regions rich in Mo acting as interdiffusion barriers, in excellent agreement with experimental evidence.

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