The natural aging of austenitic stainless steels irradiated with fast neutrons
Author(s)
Rofman, O.V.
Maksimkin, O.P.
Tsay, K.V.
Koyanbayev, Ye.T.
Short, Michael Philip
Date Issued
February 2018
Journal
Journal of Nuclear Materials
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Citation
Rofman, O.V. et al. "The natural aging of austenitic stainless steels irradiated with fast neutrons." Journal of Nuclear Materials, 499, (February 2018) 284-293 © 2017 Elsevier B.V.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Much of today's research in nuclear materials relies heavily on archived, historical specimens, as neutron irradiation facilities become ever more scarce. These materials are subject to many processes of stress- and irradiation-induced microstructural evolution, including those during and after irradiation. The latter of these, referring to specimens “naturally aged” in ambient laboratory conditions, receives far less attention. The long and slow set of rare defect migration and interaction events during natural aging can significantly change material properties over decadal timescales. This paper presents the results of natural aging carried out over 15 years on austenitic stainless steels from a BN-350 fast breeder reactor, each with its own irradiation, stress state, and natural aging history. Natural aging is shown to significantly reduce hardness in these steels by 10–25% and partially alleviate stress-induced hardening over this timescale, showing that materials evolve back towards equilibrium even at such a low temperature. The results in this study have significant implications to any nuclear materials research program which uses historical specimens from previous irradiations, challenging the commonly held assumption that materials “on the shelf” do not evolve. Keyword: Nuclear and High Energy Physics; General Materials Science; Nuclear Energy and Engineering
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnucmat.2017.11.006
