On the creep characteristics of β-zircaloy

A recent model of creep deformation in pure materials is compared with published data on β-zirconium and β-zircaloy. It is shown that the zircaloys behave like the pure metal in this phase range and that the model is capable of predicting their creep rates to within a factor of 2 on tubing material. A condition is that the curved Arrhenius plot for diffusion in zirconium represents the intrinsic behaviour of point defects in the lattice and that solute atoms have an insignificant effect on the process. A corollary is that the contribution from dislocation short-circuiting both to diffusion and to creep is negligible. (Auth.)