Investigation of The Synergistic Influence of Irradiation Temperature and Atomic Displacement Rate on the Microstructural Evolution of Ion-Irradiated Model Austenitic Alloy Fe-15Cr-16Ni

A comprehensive experimental investigation of microstructural evolution has been conducted on Fe-15Cr-16Ni irradiated with 4.0 MeV nickel ions in the High Fluence Irradiation Facility of the University of Tokyo. Irradiations proceeded to dose levels ranging from ~0.2 to ~26 dpa at temperatures of 300, 400 and 500 degrees C at displacement rates of 1 x 10^-4, 4 x 10^-4 and 1 x 10^-3 dpa/sec. This experiment is one of two companion experiments directed toward the study of the dependence of void swelling on displacement rate. The other experiment proceeded at seven different but lower dpa rates in FFTF-MOTA at ~400 degrees C. In both experiments the swelling was found at every irradiation condition studied to monotonically increase with decreases in dpa rate. The microstructural evolution under ion irradiation was found to be very sensitive to the displacement rate at all three temperatures. The earliest and most sensitive component of microstructure to both temperature and especially displacement rate was found to be the Frank loops. The second most sensitive component was found to be the void microstructure, which co-evolves with the loop and dislocation microstructure. These data support the prediction that void swelling will probably be higher in lower-flux fusion devicesmore » and PWRs at a given irradiation temperature when compared to irradiations conducted at higher dpa rates in fast reactors.« less