State variable description of 316 stainless steel postirradiation mechanical properties

An extensive description of mechanical response of breeder reactor core components to transient loading is required for design and safety analysis. This description is needed for strain rates from 10-5 to 101/s, test temperatures from 232 degree C to over 1000 degree C, and neutron (n) fluences from 0 to 1.3 X 1023 n/cm2 (E>0.1 MeV). An equation-of-state approach, proposed by E.W. Hart, is applied to existing tensile and burst data to develop an improved method of predicting mechanical behavior over this range of temperature and strain rates. The deformation model is applied to more complex loading paths with continuous temperature variation. The effect of varied heating rate can be calculated with fair agreement with fair agreement with existing data for both unirradiated and irradiated 316 stainless steel. Use of this method appears to be very promising in breeder reactor design analysis