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2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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Christmas Light
’Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house
No electrons were flowing through even my mouse.
All devices were plugged by the chimney with care
With the hope that St. Nikola Tesla would share.
Sudarshan K. Loyalka
Nuclear Technology | Volume 57 | Number 2 | May 1982 | Pages 220-227
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel | doi.org/10.13182/NT82-A26284
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Computation of nuclear reactor fuel behavior under normal and off-normal conditions is influenced by gap conductance models. These models should provide accurate results for heat transfer for arbitrary gap widths and gas mixtures and should be based on considerations of the kinetic theory of gases. There has been considerable progress in the study of heat transfer in a simple gas for arbitrary Knudsen numbers (Kn = l/, where l is a mean-free-path and is the gap width) in recent years. Using these recent results, a simple expression for heat transfer in a gas mixture (enclosed between parallel plates) for an arbitrary Knudsen number has been constructed, and a new model for gap conductance has been proposed. The latter reproduces the free molecular (small gap, Kn ≫ 1) and the jump limits (large gaps, Kn ≪ 1) correctly, and it provides fairly accurate results for arbitrary gap widths. The new model is suitable for use in large fuel behavior computer programs.