A new post-irradiation mechanical behavior test--the Miniaturized Disk Bend Test

A Miniaturized Disk Bend Test (MDBT) capable of extracting postirradiation mechanical behavior information from disk-shaped specimens no larger than those used for transmission electron microscopy has been successfully developed. Finite element analysis is performed to convert the experimentally measured data into useful engineering information. A new finite element frictional contact boundary condition model has been developed that is essential in modeling the nonuniform strain fields present in the MDBT specimen. The MDBT methodology has been shown to be capable of delivering uniaxial stress/strain information with approximately the same level of accuracy as that present in the more conventional uniaxial tensile testing approach. A data inversion strategy has been developed and applied to irradiated materials to determine uniaxial tensile behavior. Since neutron irradiation costs scale with specimen volume, this miniaturized mechanical behavior test can now provide significant savings in irradiation testing costs for nuclear materials used in fusion and other nuclear technologies. In addition, it is now possible to provide mechanical behavior information not ordinarily obtainable due to space limitations in irradiation experiments, and thus expedite alloy development investigations