Ion irradiation and nanoindentation as a screening test for irradiation effects on neutron-irradiated ferritic/martensitic high-Cr steels


Ion irradiation and nanoindentation as a screening test for irradiation effects on neutron-irradiated ferritic/martensitic high-Cr steels

Heintze, C.; Akhmadaliev, S.; Altstadt, E.; Bergner, F.

A combined approach based on ion irradiation and nanoindentation as a screening test procedure for the irradiation response of structural materials foreseen for components exposed to heavy neutron irradiation has been selected and specified in detail. Important constituents of the approach are:

  • Design of the ion irradiation experiments using the MD code SRIM and taking into account recommendations according to [1], detailed documentation of the irradiation experiments and the SRIM calculations,
  • Nanoindentation testing over a large range of indentation depths (from about 5% to 100% of the thickness of the ion-irradiated layer) to gain information on the indentation size effect and the substrate effect, analysis according to the Oliver-Pharr method [2,3],
  • Elimination of the indentation size effect (ISE) based on an unirradiated reference sample of the same material using a suitable model (e.g. [4]), elimination of the substrate effect.

A version of the approach specified above was applied to unirradiated, ion-irradiated and neutron-irradiated 9%Cr F/M steel T91 (MATTER reference material). The findings indicate that the approach based on ion irradiation and nanoindentation is suitable as a screening test for F/M steels exposed to neutron irradiation.

References
[1] R. E. Stoller, M. B. Toloczko, G. S. Was, A. G. Certain, S. Dwaraknath, F. A. Garner, Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. B 310 (2013) 75–80.
[2] W. C. Oliver, G. M. Pharr, J. Mater. Res., 7 (1992) 1564–1583.
[3] W. C. Oliver, G. M. Pharr, J. Mater. Res., 19 (2004) 3–20.
[4] W. D. Nix, H. Gao, J. Mech. Phys. Solids, 46 (1998) 411–425.

Keywords: ion irradiation; neutron irradiation; nanoindentation; irradiation hardening; ferritic/martensitic steels; T91

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