Materials for the nuclear - Modelling and simulation of structure materials

This collective publication proposes presentations of scientific approaches implemented to model and simulate the behaviour of materials submitted to irradiation, of associated experimental methods, and of some recent important results. After an introduction presenting the various materials used in different types of nuclear reactors (PWR, etc.), the effects of irradiation at the macroscopic or at the atomic scale, and the multi-scale (time and space) approach to the modelling of these materials, a chapter proposes an overview of modelling tools: multi-scale approach, electronic calculations for condensed matter, inter-atomic potentials, molecular dynamics simulation, thermodynamic and medium force potentials, phase diagrams, simulation of primary damages in reactor materials, kinetic models, dislocation dynamics, production of microstructures for simulation, crystalline visco-plasticity, homogenization methods in continuum mechanics, local approach and probabilistic approach in material fracture. The next part presents tools for experimental validation: tools for microscopic characterization or for mechanical characterization, experimental reactors and tests in atomic pile, tools for irradiation by charged particles. The next chapters presents different examples of thermodynamic and kinetic modelling in the case of various alloys (zirconium alloys, iron-chromium alloys, silicon carbide, austenitic alloys), of plasticity and failure modelling