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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Grain refinement of arch-melted beryllium-6 wt% copper

Conference ·
OSTI ID:977387

Beryllium doped with 6 weight% copper is the material of choice for fabrication of target capsules for the National Ignition Facility because of its combination of attractive neutronic, physical, and mechanical properties. The target capsules are very small (2 mm in diameter) and thin-walled (150 microns), and the material must be fine-grained and of low inclusion content. Arc-melted Be-Cu is being produced to eliminate the oxide content. Equal channel angular extrusion (ECAE) is being used to refine the as-cast grain structure. Be-Cu rods have been processed by ECAE at temperatures from 500 to 750 C in tooling with a 120{sup o} angle. Selected samples have been annealed for 1 hour at temperatures from 700 to 775 C. The ECAE processing creates a heavily deformed and finely subdivided structure, and the annealing can produce an equiaxed microstnrcture with a grain size of approximately 20 {micro}m.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Sponsoring Organization:
DOE
OSTI ID:
977387
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-03-9262
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English