A Model for Dose Dependence of the Void Swelling in Electron-Irradiated Alloys

Wei Ge,Jia Huang,Zhiying Gao,Yue Su,Shijun Zhao,Yugang Wang,Haocheng Liu,Chenxu Wang,Jianming Xue

doi:10.3390/met12020244

Abstract

Understanding the void swelling dependence on irradiation dose for structural materials is critical for the design and operation of advanced nuclear reactors. Due to their easy accessibility in high-voltage transmission electron microscopes, electron beams have been frequently employed to investigate the void swelling mechanisms. Here, we build a general model to describe the radiation-induced swelling produced by energetic electrons. Based on this model, we develop a quantitative relation between void swelling and irradiation dose, which is in good agreement with experimental data. By extrapolating to high-dose swelling in electron-irradiated alloys, our model validation is consistent with available experiments. Furthermore, the model is well supported by our phase-field simulations.

Highlights

IntroductionThe development of advanced nuclear energy systems is one of the most promising ways to address the anticipated global climate change and energy crisis
As the energy for electron irradiation is limited to 1 MeV [12], we can only find low dose and intermediate dose data for electron irradiation, we just apply our model to these experiment results
Void swelling starts to continuously grow once the irradiation dose reaches a threshold value. This can be explained by the nucleation process or incubation period for void swelling that is frequently observed in experiments [18,19]

Summary

Introduction

The development of advanced nuclear energy systems is one of the most promising ways to address the anticipated global climate change and energy crisis. One of the major problems for the development of structural materials in advanced nuclear energy systems is the swelling induced by neutron radiation-induced void growth [1,2], which has been widely investigated since the 1960s [2,3]. It is well established that energetic particles interact with materials by transferring their kinetic energies into the electronic and atomic subsystems of target materials. This process can be described by two main simplified processes [4]:

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion