Impact of neutron irradiation on hardening of baseline and advanced tungsten grades and its link to initial microstructure

Journal article (2021)

Authors

Chao Yin Belgian Nuclear Research Centre, Université Catholique de Louvain
Dmitry Terentyev Belgian Nuclear Research Centre
Andrii Dubinko Belgian Nuclear Research Centre
Tao Zhang Institute of Solid State Physics Chinese Academy of Sciences
Marius Wirtz Forschungszentrum Jülich
Steffen Antusch Karlsruhe Institut für Technologie
R.H. Petrov Team Kevin Rossi - Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering , Universiteit Gent
Thomas Pardoen Université Catholique de Louvain
Research Group
Team Kevin Rossi (Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering) (TU Delft)
Neutron irradiation Tungsten Irradiation hardening Microindentation
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Published Date

2021

Language

English

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Faculty

Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering

Department

Materials Science and Engineering

Research Group

Team Kevin Rossi

Abstract

Six tungsten grades were irradiated in the Belgian material test reactor (BR2) and characterized by Vickers hardness tests in order to investigate the irradiation-induced hardening. These tungsten grades included: Plansee (Austria) ITER specification tungsten, ALMT (Japan) ITER specification tungsten, two products from KIT (Germany) produced by powder injection molding (PIM) and strengthened by 1% TiC and 2% Y2O3 dispersed particles, and rolled tungsten strengthened by 0.5% ZrC from ISSP (China). The materials were irradiated face-to-face at three temperatures equal to 600 °C, 1000 °C, and 1200 °C to the dose of ∼1 dpa. The Vickers hardness tests under 200 gf (HV0.2) were performed at room temperature. The Vickers hardness increases as the irradiation temperature increases from 600 to 1000 °C for all materials, except for the ZrC-reinforced tungsten, for which the increase of hardness does not depend on irradiation temperature. The irradiation-induced hardness decreases after irradiation at 1200 °C. This is a result of defect annealing enhanced by thermally activated diffusion. However, even at 1200 °C, the impact of neutron irradiation on the hardness increase remains significant; the hardness increases by ∼30 to 60% compared to the non-irradiated value. In the case of TiC-strengthened material, the irradiation hardening progressively raises with irradiation temperature, which cannot be explained by the accumulation of neutron irradiation defects solely.