Radiation damage induced in Zircaloy-4 by 2.6 MeV proton irradiation

Impact of variable energy hydrogen ions on structural and mechanical properties of Zircaloy-4

“…In the past, various studies were conducted to evaluate radiation damage in Zr and its alloys caused by high energy neutrons [6][7][8][9][10]. Since, the hydrogen ions (H + ) produce similar damage as that produced by the neutrons, therefore H + irradiation effects on different properties of Zr and its alloys have also been reported [11][12][13][14]. Rafique et al [11] investigated the effects of H + dose on structural, morphological and mechanical properties of pure Zr.…”

“…Moreover, inconsistent changes occur in the structural and mechanical properties of Zr with increase of the ion dose. Izerroukenn et al [12] studied radiation damage in Zircaloy-4 with 2.6 MeV H + at different doses. The results indicated a decrease in hardness of Zircaloy-4 with increase of ion dose from 0.0017 to 0.017 dpa.…”

“…Similarly, few other studies dealing with the effects of H + damage in Zr alloys were carried out at different doses and at higher irradiation temperatures [16,17]. The literature shows that the previous studies have focused the dose dependence of H + interaction with Zircaloy-4 at constant ion energy [12][13][14][15][16]. Further, these studies were carried out at high irradiation temperature and at different ion doses [13,14,16].…”

“…From figure 3, it is further observed that the intensity of (002) Zr peak is relatively higher than the intensities of other Zr peaks in all the samples. In order to quantify the crystallite size and strain in Zircaloy-4 samples, Williamson-Hall (W-H) analysis was used[12,15,20].By using the W-H method, the total peak broadening β hkl is expressed in terms of size and strain broadenings as follows;…”