| About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2020 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
|
| Symposium
|
Accelerated Materials Evaluation for Nuclear Applications Utilizing Irradiation and Integrated Modeling
|
| Presentation Title |
Direct Measurement of Radiation Damage Through the Energy Stored in Defects: Simulations and Experiments |
| Author(s) |
Charles A. Hirst, Penghui Cao, Michael Short |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Charles A. Hirst |
| Abstract Scope |
From the ashes of the 1957 Windscale nuclear disaster, new scientific understanding emerged; the thermally-activated migration and annihilation of defects resulted in a significant energy release. Fast forward 60 years and this phenomenon may be harnessed to directly measure radiation damage within a material. Current characterisation techniques, such as Transmission Electron Microscopy, have fundamental limitations that restrict analysis to a subset of the defects in a sample. This can result in oversight of the defects responsible for irradiation-induced changes in properties. We propose to leverage the Windscale findings, to measure defect populations through their characteristic energy release upon annealing. This has been successfully simulated, using molecular dynamics, to visualise the defect recovery mechanism and to predict the macroscopic stored energy release. Current experiments are focussed on developing differential scanning calorimetry as an analytical technique for radiation damage evaluation which has the potential to greatly accelerate progress in nuclear materials science. |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Undecided |