While austenitic stainless steels (ASSs) have been widely adopted for reactor vessel internals because of their excellent material properties, diverse ageing-related degradation may occur due to high temperature, corrosive and neutron radiation environments during operation. In particular, since the change of mechanical properties is a major concern in long-term operation but it is difficult to prepare and handle standard specimens influenced by neutrons, most of experimental researches for enhanced understanding of the radiation effects have been focused on high-energetic ion irradiation and tests of small specimens. In this study, systematic finite element (FE) analyses were carried out to quantify changing mechanical properties based on both virgin and ion-irradiated nanoindentation test data of typical ASS material. With regard to the latter, ion-irradiated regions by protons were subdivided into multiple layers in the FE model to take into account depth dependent dose of ion irradiation, trial set of material parameters along the miniature specimen depths were calibrated and tensile properties of each layer were determined subsequently. Resulting strength values according to radiation damage in terms of displacement per atom were compared to reference irradiated test data and estimation equation as well as virgin test data and FE analysis results, of which details and key findings will be discussed.


Mechanical Properties of Ion-Irradiated Stainless Steels Determined by Nanoindentation Tests and Finite Element Analyses

Division / Sponsors: 
Pressure Vessels & Piping (PVP)


Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/PVP/PVP2020/volume/83815

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