Effect of the irradiation–annealing–irradiation cycle on the mechanical properties of pure copper and copper alloy

The report presents the results of two irradiation experiments. The first experiment was carried out in the SM-2 reactor with the aim to study the effect of single annealing after irradiation on mechanical properties of pure Cu and GlidCopAl25IG alloy. The aim of the second experiment performed in the RBT-6 reactor was to investigate the effect of the irradiation–annealing–irradiation (IAI) cycle. Pure Cu and GlidCopAl25IG alloy specimens were irradiated in the SM-2 and RBT-6 reactors to ≃10−3, 10−2 and 10−1 dpa at Tirr=80 °C. The investigations performed revealed that IAI cycles do not cause an accumulation of embrittlement of pure copper and GlidCopAl25IG alloy in the cycles. The experiments lead to the conclusion that the regime of intermediate annealing produces the structure in the material (relatively low density of SFT), sufficiently insensitive to subsequent irradiation (at a low dose level ≃10−2 dpa).