Tensile and Creep Properties of the Experimental Zr-Nb Alloys for Nuclear Fuel Cladding

摘要

The effects of final annealing process on the mechanical properties of Zirconium alloys (Zr-0.4Nb-0.8Sn-xFeCrMn, Zr-0.2Nb-1.1Sn-xFeCrMn, Zr-1Nb-xFeCr), which were developed for nuclear fuel cladding applications. The mechanical properties were evaluated by tensile and creep tests. The creep test was performed at 400 deg C under an applied stress of 150 MPa as a function of time. The tensile strength decreased rapidly with increasing the annealing temperature. Given an alloy, the yield strength of TD(transverse direction) was higher than that of RD(rolling direction). However, the tensile strength and elongation of TD were lower than those of RD. the creep strength with the annealing temperature showed to be much similar trend to the tensile strength. The creep resistance of Alloy 1 (Zr-0.4Nb-0.8Sn-xFeCrMn) and Alloy 2 (Zr-0.2Nb-1.1Sn-xFeCrMn) appeared to be higher than those of Alloy 3 (Zr-1Nb-xFeCr) mainly due to the effect of solid solution hardening by Sn in Alloy 1 and Alloy 2.