Tailoring plasticity of austenitic stainless steels for nuclear applications: Review of mechanisms controlling plasticity of austenitic steels below 400 °C

Abstract

AISI 304 and 316 austenitic stainless steels were invented in the early 1900s and are still trusted by materials and mechanical engineers in numerous sectors because of their good combination of strength, ductility, and corrosion resistance, and thanks to decades of experience and data. This article is part of an effort focusing on tailoring the plasticity of both types of steels to nuclear applications. It provides a synthetic and comprehensive review of the plasticity mechanisms in austenitic steels during tensile tests below 400°C. In particular, formation of twins, extended stacking faults, and martensite, as well as irradiation effects and grain rotation are discussed in details.

Investigation of crack propagation resistance of 304L, 316L and 316L(N) austenitic steels in liquid sodium

“…So far only the 304 L steel has been investigated and the fracture modes characterization remains to be investigated with the 316 L and 316 L(N) steels. We notice the seemingly coincidence of the embrittling temperature range (573e673 K) with the temperature domain where DSA is known to occur in austenitic steels [26]. Further observations at nanoscales are left for future work to reach a quantitative understanding of these sodium induced LME cases.…”

“…They were shown to lead to a preferential crack path when fracture is triggered by liquid sodium. We stress out the intrinsic complexity of plasticity in the case of austenitic steels such as 304 L or 316 L where martensitic transformations (gÀε and gÀa 0 ), twinning or nano-twinning and dynamical strain aging (DSA) occur at varying temperatures and strain rates [26,27]. The question raised by the present work is to understand if the observed LME behavior fits within the interfacial cracking realm for all the investigated steels.…”

Investigation of laser direct energy deposition for production of ODS alloys

“…Plasticity in austenitic steels is dominated by: [23], [35] While the roles of slip and dispersion hardening in improving the mechanical properties of austenitic stainless steels are well articulated in the literature, the role of twinning or extended stacking faults on the deformation behavior are not well understood [4], [5], [36]. Hence, to deconstruct the operating mechanisms EBSD in the deformed locations were performed to rationalize various mechanisms.…”

“…While the AM fabricated ODS steels did show an improvement in properties compared to its cast counter parts, this improvement could have resulted from the dramatic increases in strain hardening promoted by twinning and strain-induced plasticity mechanisms [23]. In addition, austenitic stainless steels fabricated using AM contains a significant amount of dislocations and stacking faults further improving the strain hardening during deformation [24].…”

Proton Irradiation Effects on Hardness and the Volta Potential of Welding 308L Duplex Stainless Steel

“…Additionally, irradiation hardening could produce local stress concentrations, which greatly enhance the stress corrosion cracking. At present, various studies of irradiation hardening have been conducted using austenite stainless steels (face-centered cubic, fcc), such as 304L and 316L, which are widely used as nuclear structural materials [10,11,12]. In addition, other nuclear materials, including oxide dispersion strengthened steels (body-centered cubic, bcc) [13,14], vanadium alloys [15], high-entropy alloys and reactor pressure vessels (RPV) steels have also been studied [16,17,18,19,20].…”