Abstract
Irradiation effects on stable and unstable deformations and fracture behaviors in irradiated austenitic stainless steels (SSs) have been studied in detail based on the equivalent true stress versus true strain curves. An iterative technique in finite element simulation was used to obtain the equivalent true stress-true strain data from experimental tensile curves. It was shown that the strain hardening rate was retained at a high level on unstable deformation after significant irradiation and was independent of the irradiation dose up to the initiation of a localized necking. The equivalent fracture stress was nearly independent of irradiation dose before the damage (embrittlement) mechanism changed. In low dose range (< ~ 2dpa), the fracture strain and tensile fracture energy decreased rapidly with dose and at higher doses they decreased gradually to saturated levels, which were still high for irradiated materials. It was also found that the fracture properties for EC316LN SS were less sensitive to irradiation dose than those for 316 SS, although their uniform tensile properties showed almost the same dose dependencies. It was confirmed that the dose dependence of tensile fracture properties evaluated by the linear approximation model for nominal stress was accurate enough for practical use without elaborate calculations.
