Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Atomistic simulations of defect accumulation and evolution in heavily irradiated titanium for nuclear-powered spacecraft

  • Hai Huang (Key Laboratory of Material Physics of Ministry of Education, School of Physics and Microelectronics, Zhengzhou University) ;
  • Xiaoting Yuan (Key Laboratory of Material Physics of Ministry of Education, School of Physics and Microelectronics, Zhengzhou University) ;
  • Longjingrui Ma (Key Laboratory of Material Physics of Ministry of Education, School of Physics and Microelectronics, Zhengzhou University) ;
  • Jiwei Lin (Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research & Design Institute Co.Ltd) ;
  • Guopeng Zhang (Key Laboratory of Material Physics of Ministry of Education, School of Physics and Microelectronics, Zhengzhou University) ;
  • Bin Cai (Key Laboratory of Material Physics of Ministry of Education, School of Physics and Microelectronics, Zhengzhou University)
  • Received : 2022.10.20
  • Accepted : 2023.02.24
  • Published : 2023.06.25
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Abstract

Titanium alloys are expected to become one of the candidate materials for nuclear-powered spacecraft due to their excellent overall performance. Nevertheless, atomistic mechanisms of the defect accumulation and evolution of the materials due to long-term exposure to irradiation remain scarcely understood by far. Here we investigate the heavy irradiation damage in a-titanium with a dose as high as 4.0 canonical displacements per atom (cDPA) using atomistic simulations of Frenkel pair accumulation. Results show that the content of surviving defects increases sharply before 0.04 cDPA and then decreases slowly to stabilize, exhibiting a strong correlation with the system energy. Under the current simulation conditions, the defect clustering fraction may be not directly dependent on the irradiation dose. Compared to vacancies, interstitials are more likely to form clusters, which may further cause the formation of 1/3<1210> interstitial-type dislocation loops extended along the (1010) plane. This study provides an important insight into the understanding of the irradiation damage behaviors for titanium.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 12105249), the Key Project for Science and Technology Development of Henan Province (Grant No. 212102210195), the Innovation Team Support Program for Cooperation of Young Talents & Enterprises in Zhengzhou University (Grant No. 32320368), the Henan Province Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 202102012), the Research and Practice Project of Education and Teaching Reform in Zhengzhou University (Grant No. 2022ZZUJG173), the Undergraduate Training Program for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Zhengzhou University (Grant No. 2022cxcy362), the Large Power Material Irradiation Experimental System (LP-MIES) in Dalian University of Technology, and the National Supercomputing Center in Zhengzhou.

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