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The effect of neutron irradiation on the impact toughness of austenitic stainless steel in ultrafine-grained state

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnucmat.2020.152680Get rights and content

Abstract

Austenitic stainless steel in conventional and ultrafine-grained states is studied by impact testing in an unirradiated condition and after neutron irradiation to 12 dpa at 350°C. We show that grain refinement provided higher resistance of the steel to the onset of evolving macrodefects (such as cracks) in irradiated state. Impact toughness of the coarse-grained steel notably degraded after irradiation, while the ultrafine-grained steel demonstrated better resistance of impact toughness to irradiation effect. This finding highlights the promising potential of ultrafine-grained steels to be used as advanced radiation resistant materials with enhanced mechanical performance.

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CRediT authorship contribution statement

Valentin K. Shamardin: Conceptualization, Writing - original draft. Tatyana M. Bulanova: Investigation, Methodology. Alexander E. Fedoseev: Investigation, Visualization. Alexei A. Karsakov: Data curation, Investigation. Ruslan Z. Valiev: Supervision. Marina M. Abramova: Data curation, Investigation. Ivan V. Smirnov: Validation. Nariman A. Enikeev: Conceptualization, Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowlegements

RZV, IVS and NAE acknowledge the support by Saint Petersburg State University via Lot 2017 Applied (ID:26130576) in part of the research of the unirradiated steel, processed by ECAP.

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