Microstructure modelling of ferritic alloys under high flux 1 MeV electron irradiations

The point-defect clustering is an important component of the hardening of low copper content pressure vessel steels. This study reports the first steps of a project devoted to the modelling of the nucleation and growth of point-defect clusters in ferritic alloys under irradiation at large fluence. A cluster-dynamics modelling based on rate equations giving the evolution of the population of interstitial loops up to some 0.1 μm and of vacancy clusters is developed. It is applied to two alloys FeCu (0.13 wt%) and FeMn(1.5 wt%)Ni(0.8 wt%)Cu(0.13 wt%)P(0.01 wt%) the composition of which is close to the one of pressure vessel steels and to non-alloyed Fe for comparison. The model was calibrated by carrying out 1 MeV irradiations in a high voltage microscope on these three materials and by using the results of experiments and atomic simulations reported in the literature. It is shown that the presence of copper in iron stabilises the interstitial clusters and more important that the parameters relative to the interstitials in the complex alloys are totally different from those for iron: the migration energy must be increased from 0.3 to 1 eV and the binding energy of di-interstitials must be decrease from 0.9 to 0.2 eV.