Tensile testing of irradiated vanadium using miniature specimens

摘要

Miniature tensile specimens were succesfully used to investigate high temperature helium embrittlement of vanadium alloys. Helium was introduced in the specimens by (alpha)-particle irradiation in a cyclotron. Thickness of the specimens was limited to 0.25 mm by the range of the (alpha)-particles. The gauge length and width of the specimens, 8 and 1.5 mm respectively, were kept small to minimize the cyclotron irradiation time and, to a smaller extent, to keep the reactor volume small during subsequent neutron irradiation. To load specimens in a testing machine by remote handling without deformation prior to the actual test turned out to be a challenging problem. A procedure which was developed to do so reliably, is described in this paper. Additional aspects, such as fabrication of specimens and reproducibility of the results, are discussed. (orig.). (Atomindex citation 27:010262)