Porous polycrystal plasticity modeling of neutron-irradiated austenitic stainless steels

Abstract

A micromechanical model for quantifying the simultaneous influence of irradiation hardening and swelling on the mechanical stiffness and strength of neutron-irradiated austenitic stainless steels is proposed. The material is regarded as an aggregate of equiaxed crystalline grains containing a random dispersion of pores (large voids due to large irradiation levels) and exhibiting elastic isotropy but viscoplastic anisotropy. The overall properties are obtained via a judicious combination of various bounds and estimates for the elastic energy and viscoplastic dissipation of voided crystals and polycrystals. Reference results are generated with full-field numerical simulations for dense and voided polycrystals with periodic microstructures and crystal plasticity laws accounting for the evolution of dislocation and Frank loop densities. These results are calibrated with experimental data available from the literature and are employed to assess the capabilities of the proposed model to describe the evolution of mechanical properties of highly irradiated Solution Annealed 304L steels at 330°C. The agreement between model predictions and simulations is seen to be quite satisfactory over the entire range of porosities and loadings investigated. The expected decrease of overall elastic properties and strength for porosities observed at large irradiation levels is reported. The mathematical simplicity of the proposed model makes it particularly apt for implementation into finite-element codes for structural safety analyses.