Overview of Intergranular Fracture of Neutron Irradiated Austenitic Stainless Steels

Austenitic stainless steels are normally ductile and exhibit deep dimples on fracture surfaces. These steels can, however, exhibit brittle intergranular fracture under some circumstances. The occurrence of intergranular fracture in the irradiated steels is briefly reviewed based on limited literature data. The data are sorted according to the irradiation temperature. Intergranular fracture may occur in association with a high irradiation temperature and void swelling. At low irradiation temperature, the steels can exhibit intergranular fracture at low or even at room temperatures during loading in air and in high temperature water (~300 °C). This paper deals with the similarities and differences for IG fractures and discusses the mechanisms involved. The intergranular fracture occurrence at low temperatures might be correlated with decohesion or twinning and strain martensite transformation in local narrow areas around grain boundaries. The possibility of a ductile-to-brittle transition is also discussed. In case of void swelling higher than 3%, quasi-cleavage at low temperature might be expected as a consequence of ductile-to-brittle fracture changes with temperature. Any existence of the change in fracture behavior in the steels of present thermal reactor internals with increasing irradiation dose should be clearly proven or disproven. Further studies to clarify the mechanism are recommended.