Modeling of cavity swelling-induced embrittlement in irradiated austenitic stainless steels

During long-time neutron irradiation occurred in Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs), significant changes of the mechanical behavior of materials used in reactor core internals (made of 300 series austenitic stainless steels) are observed, including irradiation induced hardening and softening, loss of ductility and toughness. So far, much effect has been made to identify radiation effects on material microstructure evolution (dislocations, Frank loops, cavities, segregation, etc.). The irradiation-induced cavity swelling, considered as a potential factor limiting the reactor lifetime, could change the mechanical properties of materials (plasticity, toughness, etc.), even lead to a structure distortion because of the dimensional modifications between different components. The principal aim of the present PhD work is to study qualitatively the influence of cavity swelling on the mechanical behaviors of irradiated materials. A micromechanical constitutive model based on dislocation and irradiation defect (Frank loops) density evolution has been developed and implemented into ZeBuLoN and Cast3M finite element codes to adapt the large deformation framework. 3D FE analysis is performed to compute the mechanical properties of a polycrystalline aggregate. Furthermore, homogenization technique is applied to develop a Gurson-type model. Unit cell simulations are used to study the mechanical behavior of porous single crystals, by accounting for various effects of stress triaxiality, of void volume fraction and of crystallographic orientation, in order to study void effect on the irradiated material plasticity and roughness at polycrystalline scale. (author)