Abstract
Nanostructured ferritic alloys (NFAs) have been considered as primary candidate materials for both fission and fusion reactors because of their excellent creep and irradiation resistances. It has been shown that high temperature fracture toughness could be significantly improved by appropriate thermo-mechanical treatments (TMTs). This article focuses on the static fracture behaviors of newly developed 9Cr NFAs with improved toughness. Optimal TMTs resulted in high fracture toughness at room temperature (>250 MPa √m) and in retaining higher than 100 MPa √m over a wide temperature range of 22-700 C. Significant differences were found in fracture surfaces and fracture resistance (J-R) curves after different TMTs. Unique fracture surface features such as shallow nanoscale facets decorated with shear lips and flake-like grains were observed in high toughness specimens.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 39-48 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Journal of Nuclear Materials |
| Volume | 449 |
| Issue number | 1-3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2014 |
Funding
This research was sponsored by the Fuel Cycle R&D Program of the Office of Nuclear Energy , as well as by the Fusion Materials Program of Office of Fusion Energy , the U.S. Department of Energy, under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle, LLC. This research was part of the International Nuclear Energy Research Initiative (I-NERI) Collaboration between United States and South Korea (I-NERI Project 2010-004-K). The authors express special thanks to Dr. Xiang Chen for his thorough review and thoughtful comments.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| U.S. Department of Energy | DE-AC05-00OR22725 |
| Office of Nuclear Energy | |
| Fusion Energy Sciences |
