Irradiation effect on Nite-SiC/SiC composites

Full text of publication follows: Silicon carbide (SiC) and SiC composites are significantly attractive materials for nuclear application in particular due to exceptional low radioactivity, excellent high temperature mechanical properties and chemical stability. Despite of the excellent potential of SiC/SiC composites, the prospect of industrialization has not been clear mainly due to the low productivity and the high material cost. Chemical vapor infiltration (CVI) method can produce the excellent SiC/SiC composites with highly crystalline and excellent mechanical properties. It has been reported that the high purity SiC/SiC composites reinforced with highly crystalline fibers and fabricated by CVI method is very stable to neutron irradiation. However the production cost is high and it is difficult to fabricate thick and dense composites by CVI method. The novel processing called Nano-powder Infiltration and Transient Eutectic Phase (NITE) Processing has been developed based on the liquid phase sintering (LPS) process modification. The NITE processing can achieve both the excellent material quality and the low processing cost. The productivity of the processing is also excellent, and various kinds of shape and size of SiC/SiC composites can be produced by the NITE processing. The NITE processing can form highly crystalline matrix, which is requirement for nuclear application. The objective of this work is to understand irradiation effect of the NITESiC/SiC composites. The SiC/SiC composites used were reinforced with high purity SiC fibers, TyrannoTM SA and fabricated by the NITE method. The NITE-SiC/SiC composite bars and reference monolithic SiC bars fabricated by CVI and NITE were irradiated at up to 1.0 dpa and 600-1000 deg. C at JMTR, Japan. Mechanical properties of non-irradiated and irradiated NITESiC/ SiC composites bars were evaluated by tensile tests. Monolithic SiC bars were evaluated by flexural tests. The fracture surface was examined by SEM. Ultimate tensile strength increased followed by neutron irradiation. Apparent change was not seen in proportional limit stress. Elastic modulus decreased slightly. The details of effect of irradiation temperature on mechanical properties will be discussed with the results of irradiation effect on constituents of the composites. (authors)