Abstract
An advanced tube-burst test system was designed to test samples of nuclear fuel cladding under conditions relevant to a postulated design-basis reactivity insertion accident (RIA) in light-water reactors. The system is based on the “driver tube” concept and allows for high-speed testing with internal pressure impulses of 10–1000 ms. To measure strain, the system was equipped with an ultra-high-speed video camera with a telecentric lens providing high focal depth, to compensate for specimen shift. A mirror system was developed to provide 360° view of the tube specimen into a single camera. Images taken during the test allow the use of a digital image correlation approach in strain evaluation. Several experiments were conducted to assess the performance of the experimental setup, and results are reported.
