Development on crack growth and crack initiation test units for stress corrosion cracking examinations in high-temperature water environments under neutron irradiation, 1 (Contract research)

Izumo, Hironobu; Chimi, Yasuhiro; Ishida, Takuya; Kawamata, Kazuo; Inoue, Shuichi ; Ide, Hiroshi  ; Saito, Takashi; Ise, Hideo; Miwa, Yukio; Ugachi, Hirokazu ; Nakano, Junichi; Kaji, Yoshiyuki  ; Tsukada, Takashi ; Ishitsuka, Etsuo   

Regarding Irradiation Assisted Stress Corrosion Cracking (IASCC) for austenitic stainless steel of the light water reactor (LWR), a lot of data that concerns the post irradiation evaluation (PIE) is acquired. However, IASCC occurs in LWR condition. Therefore, it is necessary to confirm adequacy of the PIE data comparing the experiment data under the simulated LWR condition. Bigger specimen is needed to acquire the effective data for the destruction dynamics in the study of stress corrosion cracking under neutron irradiation condition. Therefore, development of a new crack growth unit which can load to bigger is necessary to the neutron irradiation test. As a result, a prospect was provided in the unit that could load to specimen by changing load mechanism to the lever type from the linear type. And also, in the development of crack propagation unit, some technical issues were extracted from the discussion of the unit structure adopting the LVDT (Linear Variable Differential Transformer).