ISIS Neutron and Muon Source Data Journal

Inherent damage tolerance of fine grained nuclear graphite at elevated temperatures

Abstract: Current UK reactors use a graphite composite material in the core and this material comprises coarse grains and about 20 vol.% porosity. This material functions well so far but the 14 UK reactors are reaching the end of their designed lifetime. Plans for next generation of nuclear power plants are therefore underway, and new designs of this graphite composite have come up online. The new materials have finer grains and therefore are stronger. However, compared with the coarse grained UK graphite, the new material may be more 'brittle'. This is what we are trying to find out in this experiment. Neutrons will tell us how much the lattice has deformed in the material under load; we then take digital images of the surface of the sample to calculate the overall deformation. By comparing the two, the amount of 'non-brittleness' of the material at different temperatures can be derived.

Principal Investigator: Professor Dong Liu
Local Contact: Dr Saurabh Kabra
Experimenter: Dr Houzheng Wu
Experimenter: Mr Zhizhen Shao
Experimenter: Mr Daniel Bradshaw

DOI: 10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1810135

ISIS Experiment Number: RB1810135

Publisher: STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source

Data format: RAW/Nexus
Select the data format above to find out more about it.

Data Citation

The recommended format for citing this dataset in a research publication is as:
[author], [date], [title], [publisher], [doi]

For Example:
Professor Dong Liu et al; (2018): Inherent damage tolerance of fine grained nuclear graphite at elevated temperatures, STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1810135

Data is released under the CC-BY-4.0 license.