Effects of neutron irradiation on the brittle to ductile transition in single crystal tungsten

Only limited data exist on the effect of neutron irradiation on the brittle to ductile transition (BDT) in tungsten. This work investigates the increase in brittle to ductile transition temperature (BDTT) following neutron irradiation to 1.67 displacements per atom, using four-point bend tests over a range of temperatures (623–1173 K) and strain rates (3.5 × 10−7 - 2.5 × 10−5 s−1). The BDTT was found to increase by 500 K after irradiation. The activation energy for the BDT was determined using Arrhenius analysis of the four-point bend tests. Nanoindentation strain-rate jump tests were used to characterise the activation volume for dislocation motion. These were quantified as 1.05 eV and 4.6 b3 respectively, very close to values found for unirradiated tungsten. This suggests that kink-pair formation is the controlling mechanism for the BDT before and after irradiation. This work also carries out a unique verification of inventory-code-modelling (via FISPACT-II) of transmutation of tungsten to rhenium and osmium under neutron irradiation using two independent techniques (X-ray and gamma-ray spectroscopy). These results show that modelling can correctly predict this transmutation, provided that an accurate neutron spectrum is used. This is a critical result given the widespread use of inventory codes such as FISPACT-II, and the associated nuclear data libraries, for modelling transmutation of tungsten.