Transient damage resulting in failure of a component exposed to ionizing radiation environment

Abstract

Transient effects are manifested in the interaction of radiation with material of the component with an associated excitation (including ionization) and de-excitation of electrons. The ionizing radiations modify the physico-chemical structure of matter by distributing packets of energy that remain localized within a volume of molecular dimensions and are sufficient to disrupt chemical bonds. By taking the perturbations and recombination reactions to be similar to those of optical excitation of electrons an attempt has been made here to estimate the overall transient damage to the component due to ionizing radiation. As a particular case, an excess current due to this damage is assumed to be following normal distribution and the failure probability of the component has been estimated by taking a critical value I ′ c for the excess current which when exceeded, brings the component in a failed state.