Self-diffusion in zirconium-α. A calculation

After controversial discussions about normal and abnormal nature of self-diffusion in phase α in zirconium, the work of Horvath and co-authors has demonstrated the existence of an important negative curvature in the Arrhenius graph. Different reasons have been proposed to explain such unusual behaviour. Such interpretations of experimental results indicate that different effects and mechanisms could be masking thermal diffusion process by vacancy mechanism. The present work aims to determine the diffusion constants corresponding to a vacancy mechanism from computer simulation of this process. (Author)