TY - JOUR
T1 - Magnetostrictive Ultrasonic Waveguide Transducer for In-Pile Thermometry
AU - Keller, Andrew
AU - Robinson, Braden
AU - Draper, Alejandro
AU - White, Amanda
AU - Daw, Joshua
AU - Deng, Zhangxian
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
IEEE
PY - 2022/12/1
Y1 - 2022/12/1
N2 - Real-time and reliable temperature measurement on nuclear fuels is crucial for the safe operation of existing pressurized-water reactors and future advanced nuclear reactors. Magnetostrictive materials deform when subjected to a magnetic field or exhibit magnetization variation when stressed. Based on these properties, this study prototyped an ultrasonic thermometer (UT) consisting of a magnetostrictive waveguide, a dc coil providing appropriate magnetic biasing, and an ac coil generating an acoustic impulse and detecting the resulting acoustic echoes. By tracking the time of flight between the excitation pulse and the echoes, the UT can potentially detect nuclear fuel cladding temperature from a long distance. In this study, magnetostrictive iron-gallium alloys, or Galfenol, were selected as the waveguide due to their large magnetostriction, superior temperature survivability, excellent radiation resilience, and high mechanical robustness. A multiphysics finite-element model considering electrical, magnetic, and mechanical dynamics in the magnetostrictive UT was then developed. The model exhibited an error of 0.24% in time-of-flight simulation and, therefore, enabled computer-aided design and guided signal processing. Between room temperature and 120°C, the new Galfenol-based UT exhibits a linear sensitivity of 162.8× 10-6°C-1, which is 51.7% higher than a previous magnetostrictive UT based on iron-cobalt-vanadium alloys.
AB - Real-time and reliable temperature measurement on nuclear fuels is crucial for the safe operation of existing pressurized-water reactors and future advanced nuclear reactors. Magnetostrictive materials deform when subjected to a magnetic field or exhibit magnetization variation when stressed. Based on these properties, this study prototyped an ultrasonic thermometer (UT) consisting of a magnetostrictive waveguide, a dc coil providing appropriate magnetic biasing, and an ac coil generating an acoustic impulse and detecting the resulting acoustic echoes. By tracking the time of flight between the excitation pulse and the echoes, the UT can potentially detect nuclear fuel cladding temperature from a long distance. In this study, magnetostrictive iron-gallium alloys, or Galfenol, were selected as the waveguide due to their large magnetostriction, superior temperature survivability, excellent radiation resilience, and high mechanical robustness. A multiphysics finite-element model considering electrical, magnetic, and mechanical dynamics in the magnetostrictive UT was then developed. The model exhibited an error of 0.24% in time-of-flight simulation and, therefore, enabled computer-aided design and guided signal processing. Between room temperature and 120°C, the new Galfenol-based UT exhibits a linear sensitivity of 162.8× 10-6°C-1, which is 51.7% higher than a previous magnetostrictive UT based on iron-cobalt-vanadium alloys.
KW - Galfenol
KW - magnetostrictive
KW - multiphysics modeling
KW - thermometry
KW - ultrasonic transducers
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85135765085&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TMECH.2022.3189764
DO - 10.1109/TMECH.2022.3189764
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85135765085
SN - 1083-4435
VL - 27
SP - 5835
EP - 5845
JO - IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics
JF - IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics
IS - 6
ER -