Stress relaxation analysis and irradiation creep and swelling in pressure tubes

An analysis is presented of slit width test information on two pressure tubes that had been irradiated in test reactors. The analysis showed that differential swelling stresses and thermal stresses undergo relaxation. The mechanism responsible for the stress relaxation at temperatures less than 700 K was irradiation creep. Irradiation creep in thermal test reactor pressure tubes is evidently greater than it would be at equivalent conditions in fast reactors. The residual stresses observed in the slit width tests varied between 30 and 257 MPa and would act to reduce the operating stresses, thus allowing for increased service life of the tubes as compared with no stress relaxation. (author)