| About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2023 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
|
| Symposium
|
Phase Stability in Extreme Environments
|
| Presentation Title |
Reduced Alpa-prime Precipitation during Thermal Annealing and Irradiation in Ultrafine-grained or Nanocrystalline FeCrAl Alloys |
| Author(s) |
Haiming Wen, Maalavan Arivu, Rinat Islamgaliev |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Haiming Wen |
| Abstract Scope |
FeCrAl alloys are leading candidate materials for cladding of accident tolerant fuels in light water reactors replacing Zircaloy owing to their high temperature strength and corrosion resistance in steam environments. However, FeCrAl alloys suffer from embrittlement after long-term thermal aging at ~500 oC and lower, due to α’ Cr precipitation, which is detrimental to the structural performance and corrosion resistance. Another major issue for FeCrAl alloys in nuclear reactors is the irradiation-enhanced α′ precipitation, leading to irradiation-induced hardening and embrittlement. Bulk ultrafine-grained and nanocrystalline alloys possess drastically higher strength than their conventional coarse-grained counterparts, and are anticipated to have significantly enhanced irradiation tolerance. In this study, ultrafine-grained and nanocrystalline FeCrAl alloys were manufactured by equal-channel angular pressing and high-pressure torsion, respectively. The thermal aging and irradiation behavior of these materials were carefully studied. Results indicated that reducing grain size can hinder both thermally induced and irradiation enhanced α’ Cr precipitation. |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Planned: |
| Keywords |
Phase Transformations, Environmental Effects, Nuclear Materials |