Aspects of ion irradiations to study localized deformation in austenitic stainless steels

Characterization of ion irradiation effects on the microstructure, hardness, deformation and crack initiation behavior of austenitic stainless steel:Heavy ions vs protons

“…In Refs. [16] and [23], authors have reported to observe a similar trend and attributed this difference to the different penetration depths (or to be precise damage depth relative to the grain size) of two ions in the material. In this study, the value of damage depth relative to the grain size was 0.09 (i.e.…”

“…Based on the explanation given in Ref. [16], this implies that the majority of the slip lines observed on the surface of the iron irradiated samples originated in the underlying unirradiated material. Whereas in proton irradiated sample, the nucleation of channels in the irradiated region, independent of underlying unirradiated material, was dominant process.…”

“…To quantify the degree of deformation, parameters such as slip line height, width or spacing are generally used [6,9,16,48]. In this study, only slip line spacing was used to estimate the degree of localization in unirradiated and irradiated samples.…”

“…[16,22e24], authors have shown that dislocation channeling is the prime deformation mode for heavy ion irradiated austenitic stainless steel at PWR relevant temperature as well. However, the strain localization in case of heavy ion irradiated materials has been reported to be less intensive in comparison to its proton irradiated counterparts [16,23,24]. This has been attributed to the shallow penetration depth of heavy ions in austenitic stainless steel [16,23].…”

“…However, the strain localization in case of heavy ion irradiated materials has been reported to be less intensive in comparison to its proton irradiated counterparts [16,23,24]. This has been attributed to the shallow penetration depth of heavy ions in austenitic stainless steel [16,23]. In case of heavy ions, the displacement cascade produced is very similar to the neutron irradiation but it is confined to a very small volume of the material (depth of few mms for 10 MeV).…”