Advanced Manufacturing of Printed Melt Wire Chips for Cheap, Compact Passive In-Pile Temperature Sensors
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-020-04426-8 2020 This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply
ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING FOR ENERGY APPLICATIONS
Advanced Manufacturing of Printed Melt Wire Chips for Cheap, Compact Passive In-Pile Temperature Sensors KUNAL MONDAL ,1 KIYO FUJIMOTO,2,3 and MICHAEL D. MCMURTREY 1,4 1.—Materials Science and Engineering Department, Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Falls, ID 83415, USA. 2.—Measurement Sciences, Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Falls, ID 83415, USA. 3.—Micron School of Materials Science and Engineering, Boise, ID 83725, USA. 4.—e-mail: [email protected]
Melt wires are a passive sensor used to determine peak temperatures. Traditional melt wires are commonly used in test reactor experiments, such as in the Advanced Test Reactor. However, the conditions within a reactor present significant challenges towards test design, due to space limitations and the harsh environment. For example, some test capsules have only a couple millimeters in diameter available for instrumentation, which is too small to accommodate a traditional melt wire package. To enable instrumentation for space-limited applications, peak temperature sensors have been developed using additive manufacture to form printed melt wires. This paper reports on the design and fabrication of miniaturized melt wire chips with printed melt wires. This study advances the development of unique, compact temperature sensors capable of sensing user specified temperature ranges within the harsh environment of irradiation testing.
INTRODUCTION The harsh environment inside a nuclear reactor is a challenge for a variety of materials, from fuels to structural materials.1 Researchers are working to better understand how this environment affects materials and components, particularly the effect of neutron irradiation which is unique to the nuclear field.2,3 Test reactors, such as the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR), provide researchers with a means to study the effects of neutrons in their experiments.4–6 While some experiments only need to study the material with postirradiation examination to complete their research objectives, others require information during the irradiation inside the reactor.7 As a result, significant research and development has been performed, and is currently ongoing, to allow for increased instrumentation for active and passive sensors in test reactors.8,9 Active sensors, such as strain gauges,10 send a feedback signal that reports the state of the sensor during the test. Passive sensors, such as dosimeters,11 send no signal, but are examined after the (Received July 21, 2020; accepted September 29, 2020)
test to determine the characteristics of the prior experiment conditions. While in many cases active sensors are considered superior to passive sensors in terms of quantity of data, passive sensors may be easily added to any experiment. They do not require feedthroughs and are often relatively cheap. Melt wires are a passive sen
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