Nanoindentation on ion irradiated steels

Radiation induced mechanical property changes can cause major difficulties in designing systems operating in a radiation environment. Investigating these mechanical property changes in an irradiation environment is a costly and time consuming activity. Ion beam accelerator experiments have the advantage of allowing relatively fast and inexpensive materials irradiations without activating the sample but do in general not allow large beam penetration depth into the sample. In this study, the ferritic/martensitic steel HT-9 was processed and heat treated to produce one specimen with a large grained ferritic microstructure and further heat treated to form a second specimen with a fine tempered martensitic lath structure and exposed to an ion beam and tested after irradiation using nanoindentation to investigate the irradiation induced changes in mechanical properties. It is shown that the HT-9 in the ferritic heat treatment is more susceptible to irradiation hardening than HT-9 after the tempered martensitic heat treatment. Also at an irradiation temperature above 550 °C no detectable hardness increase due to irradiation was detected. The results are also compared to data from the literature gained from the fast flux test facility.