10B areal density: A novel approach for design and fabrication of B4C/6061Al neutron absorbing materials

Abstract In this paper, a novel approach to evaluate the neutron shielding performance of a boron-containing neutron absorbing material was proposed for the first time through the establishment of a direct relationship between 10 B areal density ( 10 BAD) of the material and its neutron absorption ratio. It is found when the 10 BAD of a material is greater than 0.034 g/cm 2 , the material will achieve a good neutron shielding performance. Based on this proposed approach, B 4 C/6061Al composite plates with different B 4 C content (10 wt%, 20 wt%, 30 wt%) were successfully fabricated using vacuum hot pressing followed by hot-extrusion. The characteristics of the B 4 C/Al interface were studied in details using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and the effects of B 4 C particle content on microstructure and mechanical properties of the Al matrix were investigated. Through current studies, B 4 C/6061Al composite plates possessing good neutron shielding performance and tensile strength are found to be able to be fabricated using either 20 wt% of B 4 C content with a plate thickness of 4.5 mm or 30 wt% B 4 C content with a plate thickness of 3 mm.