Positron annihilation and nano-indentation analysis of irradiation effects on the microstructure and hardening of A508-3 steels used in Chinese HTGR

Tianci Zhang, Henk Schut, Zhengcao Li, Haitao Wang*, Zhengming Zhang, Ming He

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The irradiation and annealing behavior of Chinese A508-3 reactor pressure vessel (RPV) steel (0.04 wt% Cu) after 3 MeV Fe-ion irradiation ranging from 0.1 to 20 dpa at room temperature (called RTRPV) and high temperature (250 °C, called HTRPV) was studied by positron annihilation Doppler broadening (PADB) spectroscopy and nano-indentation hardness. PADB showed that the density of vacancy-type defects was higher for low-temperature irradiations. The higher hardness was found after high-temperature irradiation because of the formation of solute clusters during irradiation. Positron annihilation measurements revealed the interaction and clustering of vacancies with solute clusters which were introduced by Fe-ion irradiation. For both RTRPVs and HTRPVs, the positron defect parameter and positron diffusion length showed the recovery of the irradiation-induced defects. Total recovery was observed after annealing at 450 °C.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)418-423
JournalJournal of Nuclear Science and Technology
Volume55
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017

Keywords

  • annealing
  • Commercial RPV
  • HTGR
  • iron ion irradiation
  • nano-indentation
  • positron annihilation
  • recovery

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