Creep Properties and Damage Study of Ni-Based Alloy C276 at High Temperature

One of the two challenges about Supercritical Water-Cooled Reactor is material, especially for the fuel cladding. High temperature creep tests of Ni-based alloy C276, one of the candidate materials for the fuel cladding, were carried out at 650°C~750°C, with stress 130MPa~430MPa. The effects of temperature and stress on creep were investigated, the change laws of steady state creep rate with stress and time to rupture were analysed, and creep damage factors were separately calculated based on Kachanov’s formula and Norton’s formula. The results indicate that there exist two types of primary creep characteristics in C276: Type I creep characteristic at lower stress level and Type II at higher stress level respectively. C276 shows excellent high temperature creep resistance, and Kachanov’s damage factors D vs normalized time are basically coincident at 650°C, 700°C and 750°C. The damage obtained by Norton’s formula starts at about 40% of lifetime, and the damage factors calculated by Kachanov’s formula are relatively conservative.