Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Improving Radiation And Stress Corrosion Cracking Resistance Of Austenitic Stainless Steels By Laser Shock Peening, Qiaofeng Lu

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Structural alloys for Generation-IV nuclear reactors need to endure a high neutron dose, high temperature, and corrosive coolant. Austenitic stainless steels, particularly the oxide-dispersion-strengthened (ODS) austenitic steels, are promising candidate materials, but they suffer several limits such as irradiation damage and stress corrosion cracking (SCC). This research applies a laser shock peening (LSP) process to improve the radiation and SCC resistance of austenitic stainless steels in simulated nuclear reactor environments. A high density dislocation networks, stacking faults and twin boundaries were generated in the surface region of 304 steels by the shock wave-material interactions in the LSP process. In-situ TEM …