Behavior of Stress-Relaxation phenomena in Zr-1.1Nb-0.05Cu

Zirconium alloys have anisotropic mechanical properties depending on their physical orientations and are widely used as nuclear materials such as cladding tube material. An operation condition of the nuclear reactor requires a high creep resistance, because it is subjected to long period operations, high temperature and high pressure. Generally, it takes a few days or months to do the creep experiment, so it is difficult to get a data in short period. However, there is a way to predict a creep property by using the stress-relaxation in the short term. These studies realized the stress-relaxation through a compressive test of HANA-6 (Zr-1.1Nb-0.05Cu) alloy that was developed by KAERI (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute), and then predicted the creep property