b'Fabiola Cappia, Jake Stockwell, anda room temperature dogbone RHT David Kammerman. For the testing,with a CS cladding sample. Full-four different cladding types werefield data sets such as these are very tested: uncoated Zircaloy-4 provideduseful for confirmation of modeling by the Advanced Fuel Campaignresults, allowing point-by-point (AFC), Cr-coatings produced by cold- comparison with finite element spray (CS) from Kumar Sridharan atoutputs for strains in multiple direc-the University of Wisconsin, and ations, across the range of test defor-physical vapor deposition Cr-coatingmations. In this case, the results and CrN coating, both from Martinillustrate the non-uniform defor-Sevecek at Czech Technical Univer- mation in the gauge at a displace-sity in Prague. Initial tests used thement which the load curve would dogbone configuration. indicate is undergoing uniform A unique furnace setup was used,elastic deformation. This aligns with a custom window added in thewell with modeling predictions.front allowing optical access for DICThe capability to assess coating during thermomechanical testing.behavior through cracking was also The split-tube furnace was alsodemonstrated with the DIC setup. In customized to allow the halves to beFigure 4, vertical strain contours are fully separated, as seen in Figure 2,shown for an elevated temperature designed by Andrew Johansen (andogbone RHT with a CS cladding intern from the University of Idaho).sample, with a portion of the gauge This facilitates stereo DIC calibrationshown below. The contour just after prior to testing. Speckle patterningtest initiation (a) shows no evidence was developed for the small lengthof cracking, as expected. However, scale elevated temperatures required;as deformation increases, eventually sample images of the patternedlocalized strain bands appear in the gauges from the camera pair arecontour (b). Closer inspection of the shown in Figure 2. Open-sourcespecimen image shows horizontal software was used both for imagecracks coinciding with the strain acquisition, with custom pythonbands, which grow large enough by scripts, and for image correlation,the next image (c) to cause dropped with digital image correlation enginesubsets. These added DIC capabili-from Sandia National Laboratory.ties position INL and AFC for high Through optimization of lighting,quality, robust mechanical testing of imaging settings, stereo angles, andATF cladding.software settings to improve image quality and maximize calibration scores, successful DIC measurements were made at both room tempera-ture and 350C.An example of pairing the load-displacement data collected from the load frame with the DIC results can be seen in Figure 3, which shows strain in the vertical (y) direction for 2023|AFC ACCOMPLISHMENTS 87'