Small-Scale Testing of In-Core Fast Reactor Materials

概要

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Part of the Fuel Cycle R&D (FCRD) initiative in the USA is to investigate materials for high dose application. While mechanical testing on large samples delivers direct engineering data, these types of tests are only possible if enough sample material and required hot cell capabilities are available. Small-scale materials testing methods in addition to large-scale materials testing allows insight on the same specimen and direct probing into areas of interest which are not accessible otherwise. In order to establish an empirical and research-based relationship between small-scale and large-scale materials testing, several different mechanical testing techniques were conducted on the same specimen irradiated in the Swiss spallation source irradiation program (STIP) at the Swiss spallation source (SINQ) at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) up to a dose of 19 dpa. It is shown that the yield strength measured by tensile testing, microcompression testing and microhardness testing all show the same trend. In addition, focused ion beam (FIB)-based techniques also are used to produce local electrode atom probe (LEAP) samples. This procedure allows cutting samples of such a small size that no radioactivity on the prepared sample can be measured.