Insights into hardening, plastically deformed zone and geometrically necessary dislocations of two ion-irradiated FeCrAl(Zr)-ODS ferritic steels: A combined experimental and simulation study

As one of promising candidate materials for fuel claddings and structural components in the Gen-IV fission reactors, FeCrAl(Zr)-ODS ferritic steels were studied to well understand the radiation hardening behavior. Nanoindentation (NI) hardness and plastically deformed zone (PDZ), geometrically necessary dislocations (GNDs) as well as microstructures were investigated for two FeCrAl(Zr)-ODS ferritic steels irradiated with 6.4 MeV Fe 3 + at room temperature (RT) up to the nominal damages of 2, 10 and 50 dpa. Irradiation-induced hardening, which was estimated by using the Nix-Gao model regardless of the damage gradient effect (DGE), increased continuously with increasing the nominal displacement damage. When taking the DGE into account, the dependence of the irradiation hardening (in MPa) on a local damage level (dpa) obtained by finite element method (FEM) simulations was 153.65 x (dpa) 0.26 and 158.35 x (dpa) 0.25 for the non-Zr steel and the Zr-added one, respectively. The hardening caused by ionirradiation was discussed in terms of the loss of oxide particles, the formation of dislocation loops and the solid solution hardening mainly by dissolved oxygen. The addition of Zr reduced the ion-irradiation hardening of steel to some extent mainly by suppressing the formation of dislocation loops. Meantime, as the FEM simulations revealed, the PDZ size underneath a conical indenter at the equivalent plastic strain epsilon eq > 1.9% can reasonably estimate the density of GNDs. According to the strain gradient plasticity (SGP) theory, the densities of GNDs at an indentation depth of 200 - 300 nm were slightly higher in the case of the 50 dpa/nominal than the unirradiated, in spite of similarity for the two FeCrAl(Zr)-ODS steels. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Acta Materialia Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ )

Automated summary

FeCrAl(Zr)-ODS ferritic steels were studied to understand their radiation hardening behavior. Irradiation-induced hardening increased with increasing displacement damage, and the addition of Zr reduced the ion-irradiation hardening. The relationship between the plastically deformed zone size and the density of geometrically necessary dislocations was determined.