A Study on laser welding of ferritic/martensitic steel (PNC-FMS) for fast reactor fuel assemblies

Kono, Fumiaki; Sogame, Motomu; Yamada, Tomonori; Shobu, Takahisa  ; Naganuma, Masayuki  ; Ozawa, Takayuki   ; Muramatsu, Toshiharu

Laser welding of ferritic/martensitic steel (PNC-FMS) sheets with different thicknesses (2 mm and 5 mm) was examined to investigate the weldability between the inner and outer duct in fast reactor fuel assemblies with inner duct structure (FAIDUS); the objective of the inner duct is to avoid the re-criticality in case of the core melting accident. Laser-spot and melt-run welding was performed at various laser powers, welding times and velocities to find out the appropriate welding conditions with few defects and enough penetration depth. As for the spot welding, furthermore, slow cooling rate or pulsed laser irradiation could reduce the crack and porosity in the welded zone. The strain of the welded zone almost disappeared and the hardness was comparable with that of the base metal by applying post welding heat treatment at 690 C for 103 min. In addition, the shear strength of welded joints was confirmed to be sufficiently higher than the provisional allowance shear stress. These results indicate that laser welding would be probably applied to the PNC-FMS inner and outer ducts.