LIST OF TABLES .................................................. v
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................. v
1 INTRODUCTION ................................................. 1
1.1 Motivation .............................................. 1
1.2 Literature review ....................................... 2
1.2.1 Early understanding of FAST from experiments ..... 5
1.2.2 Early attempts of modeling of FAST ............... 9
1.2.3 Critical needs .................................. 10
1.2. Goals of this work ..................................... 11
2 1-D ANALYTICAL MODEL ........................................ 18
2.1 Introduction ........................................... 18
2.2 Simplified lumped electric resistance circuit model .... 18
2.3 Results and discussion ................................. 19
2.4 Conclusions ............................................ 21
3 3-D FINITE ELEMENT MODEL .................................... 28
3.1 Introduction ........................................... 28
3.2 Modeling framework ..................................... 29
3.2.1 Theory .......................................... 29
3.2.2 Numerical implementation ........................ 30
3.3 Evaluation of the framework ............................ 36
3.3.1 Experimental work ............................... 36
3.3.2 FE model ........................................ 39
3.3.3 Experimental results ............................ 41
3.3.4 FE model results ................................ 42
3.4 Conclusions ............................................ 55
4 2-D DISCRETE ELEMENT MODEL .................................. 78
4.1 Introduction ........................................... 78
4.2 Method ................................................. 79
4.3 Simulation setup ....................................... 80
4.3.1 Mechanical compaction ........................... 81
4.3.2 Thermal property extraction ..................... 82
4.4 Experimental procedure ................................. 85
4.5 Results and discussion ................................. 85
4.5.1 Mechanical compaction ........................... 85
4.5.2 Evolution of effective thermal conductivity ..... 86
4.6 Conclusions ............................................ 88
5 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK ................................ 104
REFERENCES .................................................... 106
APPENDIX A: ABAQUS USER SUBROUTINES ........................... 113
APPENDIX B: PROCEDURE FOR CALIBRATION OF CONTACT RESISTANCE ... 116
APPENDIX C: CASE STUDY OF FAST ................................ 125
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................. 143
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