Deformation in metals after low-temperature irradiation: Part II – Irradiation hardening, strain hardening, and stress ratios Original Research Article

Effects of irradiation at temperatures ⩽200 °C on tensile stress parameters are analyzed for dozens of body-centered cubic (bcc), face-centered cubic (fcc), and hexagonal close packed (hcp) pure metals and alloys, focusing on irradiation hardening, strain hardening, and relationships between the true stress parameters. Similar irradiation-hardening rates are observed for all the metals irrespective of crystal type. Typically, irradiation-hardening rates are large, in the range 100–1000 GPa/dpa, at the lowest dose of <0.0001 dpa and decrease with dose to a few tens of MPa/dpa or less at about 10 dpa. However, average irradiation-hardening rates over the dose range of 0 dpa−DC (the dose to plastic instability at yield) are considerably lower for stainless steels due to their high uniform ductility. It is shown that whereas low-temperature irradiation increases the yield stress, it does not significantly change the strain-hardening rate of metallic materials; it decreases the fracture stress only when non-ductile failure occurs. Such dose independence in strain-hardening behavior results in strong linear relationships between the true stress parameters. Average ratios of plastic instability stress to unirradiated yield stress are about 1.4, 3.9, and 1.3 for bcc metals (and precipitation hardened IN718 alloy), annealed fcc metals (and pure Zr), and Zr-4 alloy, respectively. Ratios of fracture stress to plastic instability stress are calculated to be 2.2, 1.7, and 2.1, respectively. Comparison of these values confirms that the annealed fcc metals and other soft metals have larger uniform ductility but smaller necking ductility when compared to other materials.