Development of a miniaturized disk-bend test for the determination of postirradiation mechanical properties

A Miniaturized Disk Bend Test capable of extracting postirradiation mechanical behavior information from disk-shaped specimens no larger than those used for Transmission Electron Microscopy is currently being developed. Finite element analysis is performed to convert the experimentaly measured load-deflection data into useful engineering information. Since neutron irradiation costs scale with specimen volume, successful development of miniaturized mechanical property tests could provide significant savings in irradiation testing costs for nuclear materials used in fusion and other nuclear technologies. In addition, it may be possible to provide mechanical behavior information which is not ordinarily obtainable due to space limitations in irradiation experiments