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Title: Charpy toughness and tensile properties of a neutron-irradiated stainless steel submerged arc weld cladding overlay

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:6315634

The cladding was applied to a pressure vessel steel plate by the submerged arc, single-wire, oscillating-electrode method. Three layers of cladding provided a thickness adequate for fabrication of test specimens. The first layer was type 309, and the upper two layers were type 308 stainless steel. The type 309 was diluted considerably by excessive melting of the base plate. Specimens were taken from near the base plate-cladding interface and also from the upper layers. Charpy V-notch and tensile specimens were irradiated at 288/sup 0/C to a fluence of 2 x 10/sup 23/ neutrons/m/sup 2/ (>1 MeV). When irradiated, both types 308 and 309 cladding increased 5 to 40% in yield strength and slightly increased in ductility in the temperature range from 25 to 288/sup 0/C. All cladding exhibited ductile-to-brittle transition behavior during impact testing. The type 308 cladding, microstructurally typical of that in reactor pressure vessels, showed very little degradation in either upper-shelf energy or transition temperature due to irradiation. Conversely, the impact properties of the specimens containing the highly diluted type 309 cladding, microstructurally similar to that produced during some off-normal welding conditions in existing reactors, experienced significant increases in transition temperature and drops of up to 50% in upper-shelf energy. The impact energies of the Charpy specimens containing the type 309 layer strongly reflected the amount of the type 309 actually in the specimen, falling into two distinct high- and low-energy populations with the low-energy population corresponding to a higher fraction of type 309 in the specimen.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (USA)
DOE Contract Number:
AC05-84OR21400
OSTI ID:
6315634
Report Number(s):
NUREG/CR-3927; ORNL/TM-9309; ON: TI85000409; TRN: 85-000234
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English