Abstract
Tubes made of Zr–2.5Nb alloy in cold-worked and stress relived condition are used as pressure boundary component called pressure tube or coolant tube in Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors (PHWR). Earlier the pressure tubes were manufactured from the double-melted ingots, but later it was changed to quadruple-melted ingots to achieve high initial fracture toughness attributed to impurities, such as chlorine, phosphorus and carbon. In the present study, thermal creep behaviour of Zr–2.5Nb alloy pressure tube material produced from double and quadruple-melted ingots was characterised in the temperature range of 350–450 °C and a stress ranging from 0.7 to 0.9 times of yield strength. The rupture time, minimum creep rate, stress exponent and activation energy were determined using creep specimens with its axis parallel to the axial and transverse direction of the tubes. An attempt has been made to understand the role of alloying elements and impurities on thermal creep behaviour of Zr–2.5Nb pressure tube alloy.
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Acknowledgements
Authors are grateful to late Dr. S. Banerjee and Dr. R. K. Sinha, former Secretaries, Department of Atomic Energy for constant encouragement and Dr. G. K. Dey, former Director, Materials Group, BARC and Dr. Madangopal Krishnan, former AD, Materials Group for their constant support and encouragement. Authors acknowledge Mr. S. Vijayakumar, former Associate Director (T), Engineering Directorate, NPCIL, for providing the material for this study. Authors also acknowledge the support provided by Mr. Sandeep Chandanshive of Mechanical Metallurgy Division, BARC, Mumbai for the preparation of the test samples and extending help in performing the tensile and creep tests.
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XII plan project no. XII-N-R&D2501.
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All the experiments were conducted by Mr. Vivek Patel and Manuscript was prepared jointly by both the co-authors.
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Singh, R.N., Patel, V., Gopalan, A. et al. Effect of Multiple Arc Melting of Ingots on Thermal Creep Behaviour of Zr–2.5Nb Pressure Tube. Trans Indian Natl. Acad. Eng. 7, 615–624 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41403-021-00287-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41403-021-00287-y