The increase of irradiation-induced yield strength in model alloys and its correlation with transition temperature shifts and similitude to reactor pressure vessel materials

Abstract

A series of model alloys are studied to understand irradiation embrittlement phenomena and similitude in behaviours with commercial Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) materials. Important results and prediction models for a Ductile-to-Brittle Transition Temperature (DBTT) shift are drawn from the data. Some of the issues have always been the lack of tensile properties and the impossibility to establish a correlation between the transition temperature and the hardening of the alloys. Recently, within the FRAME project, tensile properties have been measured on both fresh and irradiated specimens. It is these new data that are analysed in this paper to investigate the irradiation-induced yield strength increases of the model alloys and compare them with existing data from RPV steels.