About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2027 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
|
| Symposium
|
Modeling, AI Applications, and Method Development in Nuclear Materials
|
| Presentation Title |
Thermodynamically Consistent Phase-Field Modeling of Molten Salt Corrosion Using CALPHAD-Based Metal-Salt Thermochemistry |
| Author(s) |
Xueyang Bognar, Nathan Bieberdorf, Mark Asta, Laurent Capolungo |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Xueyang Bognar |
| Abstract Scope |
Molten salt reactors provide notable advantages in safety and efficiency, but corrosion of structural materials remains a major challenge. This process is governed by coupled redox-species transport, electron transfer, and interfacial phenomena. In this work, we develop a thermodynamically consistent phase-field model that couples phase and concentration evolution through reaction terms. The nonlinear phase-field kinetics are formulated using reaction-rate theory to recover the sharp-interface current-overpotential relation in the low-driving-force limit. We leverage the Molten Salt Database-Thermochemical (MSD-TC) to model the chemical free energy of the metal-salt system. After assessing MSD-TC, we compile standard chemical potentials and activity coefficients for the corrosion reactions studied here. As a demonstration, we apply the framework to Ni-Cr alloy corrosion by UCl4 and CrCl3 in molten salt. Two-dimensional simulations show that interfacial morphology depends on oxidant type and concentration. This work establishes a CALPHAD-informed framework for molten salt corrosion in nuclear materials. |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Planned: |
| Keywords |
Computational Materials Science & Engineering, Nuclear Materials, Modeling and Simulation |