The primary origin of dose rate effects on microstructural evolution of austenitic alloys during neutron irradiation

Damage structures in austenitic stainless steels during incubation period of void swelling

“…There have been a number of studies on the void swelling behavior of them [1,2]. Recent theoretical and experimental analyses have revealed the importance of incubation period, a transient stage before the steady growth of voids.…”

Influence of boron on void swelling in model austenitic steels

“…The results for the boron-doped alloys are presented in this paper and compared with those of the boron-free alloys reported earlier [2,3].…”

“…2 shows the swelling of the full set of specimens. If we focus on the two boron-free alloys, it is clearly observed that lower dose rates strongly increase swelling by shortening the incubation dose for the onset of steady-state swelling, while the steady-state swelling rate of 1%/dpa is not affected by dose rate [2,3]. For the .0 · 10 À7 dpa/s and 15.6 dpa for 2 cycles-irradiation specimens.…”

“…Detailed descriptions of experimental procedures were presented elsewhere [2], and are only briefly reviewed here. Fe-15Cr-16Ni-500 appm B, Fe-15Cr-16Ni-0.25Ti-500 appm B, as well as the boron-free alloys were prepared from high purity Fe, Cr, Ni, Ti and B by arc-melting.…”

Impact of transmutation issues on interpretation of data obtained from fast reactor irradiation experiments

“…If the radiation-induced property change of interest depends not only on the accumulated dpa level, but also on the dpa rate and/or transmutation-induced changes in composition, it is not valid to treat the data derived from such 'constant time' experiments as representing the response to a single variable. For instance, it has recently been shown that constant time FFTF-MOTA experiments on void swelling of Fe-Cr-Ni alloys which do not transmute strongly, are significantly impacted by differences in dpa rate [1,2]. In some cases the effect of dpa rate can overwhelm the impact of the dpa [3].…”