Joining of SiC-based materials for nuclear energy applications

This paper reports on the preliminary results of a project involving Politecnico di Torino (Italy), ORNL (USA) and Kyoto University (Japan) on low activation joining materials, techniques and mechanical testing for SiC-based materials. Results on glass ceramic joined SiC will be presented. A new torsion test based on miniaturized hour-glass shaped specimens is proposed here to be used as pure shear strength test method for joined samples to be submitted to neutron irradiation. Preliminary results on hour-glass shaped joined specimens have been obtained by this method.