Evaluation of Irradiation Hardening of P92 Steel under Ar Ion Irradiation

Abstract

P92 steel was irradiated with Ar ion up to 10 dpa at 200, 400, and 700 • C. The effect of Ar ion irradiation on hardness was investigated with nanoindentation tests and microstructure analyses. It was observed that irradiation-induced hardening occurred in the steel after Ar ion irradiation at all three temperatures to 10 dpa. The steel exhibited significant hardening at 200 and 700 • C, and slight hardening at 400 • C under Ar ion irradiation. Difference in the magnitude of irradiation-induced hardening at different temperature in the steel is attributed to different changes in the microstructure of the steel that arose from the irradiation. Irradiation-induced hardening in the P92 steel irradiated at 200 • C is attributed to the occurrence of both dislocation loops and other fine irradiation defects during irradiation. Slight hardening in the steel irradiated at 400 • C mainly arises from the annihilation of defect clusters at this temperature. The occurrence of fine Ar bubbles with high number density during the Ar ion irradiation at 700 • C resulted in the significant hardening in the steel.

Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of Structural Metals and Alloys

“…The changes in phase content, transformation, and particle precipitation and their effect on the properties are also broadly presented in this collection [17][18][19][20][21]. In two papers [19,22], particular emphasis is placed on the microstructure/property changes caused by irradiation.…”

“…Those readers interested in structural steels may learn much from comprehensive investigations of microstructural changes and their effect on mechanical properties caused by plastic working and heat treatment of diverse steel types [2,7,8,10,12,15,16,[19][20][21][22]. Two of these papers [7,12] present experimental/simulation results of mechanical behavior of high-Mn TWIP steels, which have recently aroused a great interest among material scientists and engineers because of outstanding strengthductility combination inherent in such steels.…”

“…Two of these papers [7,12] present experimental/simulation results of mechanical behavior of high-Mn TWIP steels, which have recently aroused a great interest among material scientists and engineers because of outstanding strengthductility combination inherent in such steels. Some crucial features of structure-property relations are detailed for advanced heat resistant [10,15,19,22] and stainless [8,21] steels. Materials scientists working with aluminum alloys may find many interesting results for dispersion strengthening, including processing, structural/precipitation analysis, and mechanical testing [13,17,18].…”

Fundamental Mechanisms for Irradiation-Hardening and Embrittlement: A Review

“…Over recent decades, irradiation-hardening and embrittlement have been widely observed in nuclear structural materials with different crystalline structures [1][2][3][4], e.g., face-centered cubic (FCC) [5][6][7][8], body-centered cubic (BCC) [9][10][11] and hexagonal close-packed (HCP) [12][13][14][15] materials. Compared with their unirradiated counterparts, the yield stress or hardness of irradiated materials tends to increase with the irradiation dose (see Figure 1a,b for instance) until the density of irradiation-induced defects gets saturated.…”

Investigation of Long and Short Term Irradiation Hardening of P91 and P92 Ferritic/Martensitic Steels

“…F/M steel have been widely studied by many research groups [11][12][13]. This paper investigates mechanical properties (hardness) of P91 and P92 steels at high temperature.…”