Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program Modeling of Cu Precipitate Contributions to Reactor Pressure Vessel Steel Microstructure Evolution and Embrittlement
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA (United States)
This report summarizes the lower-length-scale effort during FY 2017 in developing simulation capabilities for the mesoscale: models for microstructure evolution and plasticity in reactor pressure vessel steels. During operation, reactor pressure vessels undergo hardening and embrittlement caused by irradiation induced defect accumulation and irradiation enhanced solute precipitation. Both defect production and solute precipitation initiate on the atomic scale and manifest their eventual effects as degradation in the engineering scale properties. To predict the engineering scale property degradation, multiscale modeling and simulation capabilities are needed to better understand the microstructure evolution and to connect the microstructure feature evolution to the engineering scale material properties. In this report the development of coupling across different length scale models to understand the multi-physics property dedgration problem is discussed. The development of coupling a lattice kinetic Monte Carlo code to cluster dynamics to capture irradiation enhanced diffusion in the formation of defects is summarized. The implementation of a cluster dynamics model with Grizzly to predict Cu percipitate formation is discussed. A summary of the coupling of crystal plasticity and cluster dynamics to predict the effect on reactor pressure steel hardening is given.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 1408753
- Report Number(s):
- INL/EXT-17-43110
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Grizzly: A Multi-scale and Multi-Physics Tool to Model Aging of Nuclear Power Plant Components
Crystal Plasticity Model of Reactor Pressure Vessel Embrittlement in GRIZZLY